English Language Day is celebrated every year on April 23, as both the birthday and date of death of William Shakespeare, a famous playwright who had a huge impact on modern-day English.
Today, every one in four people in the world uses English. English is being used more and more as a way for two speakers with different first languages to communicate with each other.
The purpose of the UN's language days is to celebrate multilingualism and cultural diversity, as well as promote equal use of all six official languages throughout the Organization.
At the United Nations, English is one of the two working languages, along with French. The day is the result of a 2010 initiative by the Department of Global Communications, to establish language days for each of the organization's six official languages.
The day was first celebrated in 2010, alongside Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian, and Spanish Language Days.
5 Interesting facts about English
English is spoken by 952 million people around the world as their first language and 603 million people as their second language.
‘pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis,’ which is a medical term for referring to a lung disease caused by fine silica dust inhalation, is the longest English word.
‘I am,’ is the shortest complete sentence in English.
According to historians and medieval records, ‘I’ is the shortest and oldest English word.
English writer Samuel Johnson wrote the first English dictionary in 1755.
