ENGLISH IS OUR SECOND LANGUAGE

Recently released census 2001 data on bilingualism and trilingualism says thatEnglish was the primary language for barely 2.3 lakh Indians at the time of the census, more than 86 million listed it as their second language and another 39 million as their third language. This puts the number of English speakers in India at the time to more than 125 million. English speakers in India outnumber those in all of western Europe, not counting the United Kingdom. And Indian English-speakers are more than twice the UK’s population.

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