Charted: Countries With the Highest Native English Speakers

There are about 1.53 billion people worldwide who speak English, either as their first or second language. 

While many continue to argue that colonial history has influenced how English is used globally, there’s a bigger picture. 

This visualization shows the percentage of native English speakers in each country, based on data from World Data Info.

• Bermuda’s small population is 100% native English speakers.
• Northern Europe (the UK at 97.3%) and the Caribbean (Trinidad at 93.5%) have high native rates.
• Highly proficient regions, such as North America, gain economic advantages, while low-penetration nations, like Japan (0.1%), face barriers partly due to the wide linguistic distance between English and their native languages.