How many people in the world do NOT speak English

It is very easy to think that everyone speaks English today. The internet is full of English websites, international business runs on it, and popular movies use it. But if we look at the real data, the situation is completely different.

The real numbers behind global languages

There are over8 billion peopleon Earth right now. According to recent linguistic data, only about1.5 billionof them speak English. This includes both native speakers and people who learned it as a second language.

This means exactly what it sounds like:

• More than6.5 billion peopledo not speak English at all.
• That is roughly80% of the entire world population.
• Only about380 millionare native English speakers.

If you run a website, these numbers should be very important to you. When your site is only available in English, you are simply turning away the vast majority of potential users. For everyone else, English is just an additional language. They might be able to read a simple article, but it does not mean they feel safe spending money or making decisions in a foreign language.

The massive gap on the internet

Let us look at how this changes user behavior online. Statistics from W3Techs for 2024 show that:

• English is used by about50% of all websites.
• Only20% of the worldactually understands it.

This creates a huge gap. People are looking for content in their native tongues, but they can not always find it.

Can’t read, won’t buy

A very famous research series by Common Sense Advisory, called “Can’t read, won’t buy”, prooves how critical this is for any business. They asked thousands of online shoppers across 29 different countries about their habits.

The results are clear:

• Around76%of online shoppers prefer to buy products if the information is written in their own language.
• Even worse for English-only sites,40%of people said they will absolutely never buy from websites that are not in their native language.

People want to feel comfortable and secure when they browse and shop. Reading complicated delivery terms or product specs in a foreign language just adds stress. Most users will simply close the tab and find a local competitor.

Why translation is a technical necessity

Website translation is not just an extra feature. It is a necessary technical step for growth. When you add new languages to your site, you also generate automatic SEO benefits.

Search engines will index your new translated pages. This means your website will start ranking in local search results across different countries. You get free organic traffic from places where people search in Spanish, German, French or Hindi.

You do not need to spend months translating everything manually. With modern solutions, like our WordPress translation plugin, you can make your website multilingual just by addingone line of code. It automatically handles technical SEO, canonical tags, and hreflang attributes so search engines understand your new languages perfectly.

Do not underestimate the power of speaking to a user in their own language. It builds trust, improves your search rankings, and opens your project to the very big rest of the world.