English Language Day

Today is English Language Day at the United Nations.  It falls on 23 April which is traditionally observed as both the birthday and date of death of William Shakespeare.  English Language Day at the UN started in 2010 and there is a day for each of the UN's six official languages.

French Language Day is 20 March, Chinese Language Day is on 20 April, Russian Language Day is on 6 June, and Arabic Language Day is on 18 December.  Spanish Language Day also falls on 23 April.  Seems kind of odd to me that English and Spanish both share the same day.

English isn't the world's most spoken language but it is the official language of 67 countries and is spoken as a first language of about 372,9 million people and the world's most popular foreign language.  There are about 1,4 billion people in the world who speak English.

Here's a short video I found on YouTube from the UN about English Language Day.

©UNIFIL