The number of speakers of English in Shakespeare's time is estimated to have been about five million. Today it is estimated that some 260 million people speak it as a native language, mainly in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Ireland, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. In addition to the standard varieties of English found in these areas, there are a great many regional and social varieties of the language, as well as various levels of usage that are employed both in its spoken and written forms. It is virtually impossible to estimate the number of people in the world who have acquired an adequate working knowledge of English in addition to their own language. The purposes for which English is learned and the situations in which such learning takes place are so varied that it is difficult to define and still more difficult to assess what constitutes an adequate working knowledge for each situation. The main reason for the widespread demand for English is its present-clay importance as a world language. Besides serving the infinite needs of its native speakers, English is a language in which some of the most important works in science, technology, and other fields are being produced, and not always by native speakers. It is widely used for such purposes as meteorological and airport communications, international conferences, and the dissemination (传播) of information over the radio and television networks of many nations. It is a language of wider communication for a number of developing countries, especially former British colonies. Many of these countries have multilingual populations and need a language for internal communication in such matters as government, commerce industry, law and education as well as for international communication and for access to the scientific and technological development in the West. There arc about 260 million people who can speak _________.