More and more people realize that every educated person should know a foreigner language. The most popular language now is English. English is a world language. It's the language of progressive science and technology, trade and cultural relation, commerce and business. It's the universal language of international aviation, shipping and sports. It is also the major language of diplomacy. Hundreds and hundreds of books, magazines and newspapers are printed in English and real all over the world. 75% of the world's mail and 60% of the world's telephone calls are in English. Half of the world's scientific literature is written in English too.
English is spoken by more than 350 million people . It is the official language of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland of the United States of America, of Australia and New Zealand. English is used as one of the official languages in Canada, the Republic of South Africa and the Irish Republic. It's also spoken as second language speakers in many parts of Asia and Africa.
The number of second language speakers may soon exceed the number of native speakers. In Russia English is very popular: it is studied at schools, colleges, universities, and sometimes even at nurse schools. There are also other languages that are popular in the world. For example over 1000 million people use Chinese, the first language in the number of people who speak it, it means that out one of every five people in whole world speaks Chinese. Another popular language is Arabic, which is the official language of several Asia's countries (Iran, Iraq, Syria, United Arab Emirates and others).
Learning a foreign language is not an easy thing. It is a long and slow process that takes a lot of time and patience. But to know languages today is absolutely necessary for everyone. I want to know foreign language because I have always been interested in foreign countries and their cultures. You know I think that who doesn't know a foreign language, doesn't know his own language.