New York and London English

Click to enlarge map.

In very rough terms, the American English world has over 400 million English speakers in the U.S., plus Canada, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. Its cultural capital is New York.

The British English world is quite large. At minimum, it has 210 million English speakers in Great Britain, the old (once white) dominions (Australia, South Africa, Ireland, New Zealand), and in the former colonies (especially India, Pakistan, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Papua New Guinea, Jamaica). The British English speakers look to London.

We don’t count so much countries dominated by Pidgin English (led by Nigeria), which may not look to either outside capital.

Americans keep this in mind—the British-speaking world is large, roughly 65% the size of the U.S.

New York and London.