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. 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. another popular language is arabic, which is the official language of several asia's countries (iran, iraq, syria, united arab emirates and others).