In Quebec, French signs by law have to be twice as big as their English translations. The top spot in the Los Angeles radio market belongs to KSCA-FM, a Spanish language station.
It seems that English is being attacked everywhere and losing. But that is clearly a false image as few people would doubt the vitality and dominance of English, not simply in the United States and Canada, but indeed the rest of the world. And if you were limited to learning just one language, the most beneficial would certainly be English because it is the lingua franca of our times.
Although English is spoken by fewer people as a native language than Spanish or Mandarin Chinese worldwide -- 322 million vs. 332 million and 885 million respectively -- another 350 million speak English as their second language. Some linguists believe the actual figure is much higher and English in fact may beat Mandarin Chinese in terms of the number of speakers.
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