Lines Matching refs:Spanish
1142 "Over 380 million people speak English as their first language. English today is probably the third largest language by number of native speakers, after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish.[9][10] However, when combining native and non-native speakers it is probably the most commonly spoken language in the world, though possibly second to a combination of the Chinese Languages, depending on whether or not distinctions in the latter are classified as \"languages\" or \"dialects.\"[11][12] Estimates that include second language speakers vary greatly from 470 million to over a billion depending on how literacy or mastery is defined.[13][14] There are some who claim that non-native speakers now outnumber native speakers by a ratio of 3 to 1.[15]\n" +
1169 "English is the language most often studied as a foreign language in the European Union (by 89% of schoolchildren), followed by French (32%), German (18%), and Spanish (8%).[28] In the EU, a large fraction of the population reports being able to converse to some extent in English. Among non-English speaking countries, a large percentage of the population claimed to be able to converse in English in the Netherlands (87%), Sweden (85%), Denmark (83%), Luxembourg (66%), Finland (60%), Slovenia (56%), Austria (53%), Belgium (52%), and Germany (51%). [29] Norway and Iceland also have a large majority of competent English-speakers.\n" +
1273 " 2. The alveolar flap [?] is an allophone of /t/ and /d/ in unstressed syllables in North American English and Australian English.[30] This is the sound of tt or dd in the words latter and ladder, which are homophones for many speakers of North American English. In some accents such as Scottish English and Indian English it replaces /?/. This is the same sound represented by single r in most varieties of Spanish.\n" +
1360 "English is noted for the vast size of its active vocabulary and its fluidity.[citation needed][weasel words] English easily accepts technical terms into common usage and imports new words and phrases that often come into common usage. Examples of this phenomenon include: cookie, Internet and URL (technical terms), as well as genre, über, lingua franca and amigo (imported words/phrases from French, German, modern Latin, and Spanish, respectively). In addition, slang often provides new meanings for old words and phrases. In fact, this fluidity is so pronounced that a distinction often needs to be made between formal forms of English and contemporary usage. See also: sociolinguistics.\n" +
