About half the world's population (some 3 billion people) speak a language that belongs to the Indo-European language family. The total number of languages and dialects in this family is estimated to be about 439. They include <span>most of the major </span>languages<span> of </span>Europe<span> and western </span>Asia.
English is one of those languages and it is spoken by an estimated 1.5 billion<span> people -- one-fifth of the world's entire population. However, most people who speak English have learned it as a second language. About </span>360 million people speak it as their first language<span>.</span>
