The relevant wikipedia page [0] puts it thusly:<p>&gt; For example, English has about 340 million native speakers but, depending on the criterion chosen, can be said to have as many as 2 billion speakers.<p>This statistic is based on research[1] from 2008 which summarizes it&#x27;s abstract with this sentence:;<p>&gt; In short, we have moved in 25 years from a fifth to a quarter to a third of the world&#x27;s population being speakers of English.<p>So, not quite the majority.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;List_of_languages_by_total_number_of_speakers" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;List_of_languages_by_total_num...</a>
[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;journals.cambridge.org&#x2F;action&#x2F;displayAbstract?fromPage=online&amp;aid=1742576&amp;fileId=S0266078408000023" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;journals.cambridge.org&#x2F;action&#x2F;displayAbstract?fromPag...</a>