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Classics

- The Happy Prince and The Nightingale and Rose, Author Oscar Wide,
Helbling Readers, Disal.

The International Language English

English is present in our daily lives. If you have access to the Internet, most of the information there is in English, if you like listening to pop songs, lots of them are in English, if you go to the cinema, most film productions are in English; in other words, we get in contact with English all the time.

There are about 700 million speakers of English around the world. In some countries it it the first language, like in the USA and the United Kingdom. In Canada, for example, people speak English and French as official languages. In other countries like in South Africa, Pakistan and India, it is the second official language. And we cannot forget people who need to speak the language for professional reasons: the world of science and business uses English as a means of communication. In this sense, English is considered a "lingua franca".

But is the language the same in all these contexts of use? Of course not. There are many different kinds of English. For example, a British person would call a taxi to go home, but American would call a cab; a student at school in the USA uses an eraser, whereas a school boy in England uses a rubber. And an American inside a bank waits in line, whereas a British waits in a queue.