Mr. Smith had a hotel near the biggest train station in London. A lot of foreigners stayed there for the night. Mr. Smith only knew English, so he found it not easy for him to understand the people from other countries such as Russia, France and Japan. He thought Russian was boring but Japanese was interesting. So he asked a friend of his who knew Japanese to teach him. He studied hard and happily. At first he learned some, but soon he found that it wasn’t easy to remember Japanese words. His friend asked him to write down the useful words on his notebook so that he could use them. He did as he was told. He found it helpful for him to do so.

One evening, there were a lot of people in the dining room of his hotel. They were all busy eating something, but a Japanese was walking up and down there. He seemed to be waiting for someone. Mr. Smith thought to himself, “Maybe the man is hungry and wants to eat something, but he doesn’t know any English. I’ll try to help him.”

Because Mr. Smith knew only a little Japanese, he had to take out his notebook and showed the sentence “I am very hungry” to the Japanese.

To his surprise, the Japanese took a look at it and gave him two dollars, and then left the hotel.

English is spoken as a first language by most people in the USA, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and Canada. However,【小题1】. It is the main language in over 60 countries, including India, Singapore and many of the Caribbean and Pacific islands. In these places English is spoken as a second language.

【小题2】, like China and Japan. People in these countries use it for business, and travelers to these countries use English when they get there to communicate. Other people may learn English because they enjoy reading books in English, listening to British or American music or watching American films.

【小题3】. It is no longer right to talk about British English or American English if the speakers come or don’t come from those countries. People in Japan and Korea, for example, may use the American spelling but may not sound like Americans.

English will probably be the most widely used language in the world by the end of the 21st century. This language no longer belongs to British, American or Australian speakers.