About half the world's population (some 3 billion people) speak a language that belongs to the Indo-European language family. The total number of languages and dialects in this family is estimated to be about 439. They include most of the major languages of Europe and western Asia.
English is one of those languages and it is spoken by an estimated 1.5 billion people -- one-fifth of the world's entire population. However, most people who speak English have learned it as a second language. About 360 million people speak it as their first language.