Correction

thanks to those who called me on a mistake in class tonight... i cited a miscitation of Graddol (2000) and mistakenly noted that there are an estimated 37 million speakers of English in the so-called "inner circle". As with some of you, that seemed strangely low when i looked at it in class and I've gone back and found that my source simply left off a zero (in 2000 Graddol estimated roughly 370 million speakers in the inner and outer circles respectively). i absent-mindedly copied the figure without giving it much thought. sorry for the oversight. it was a pretty off the wall mistake. so, apologies. according to the more recent numbers, we're around 380 million in the inner and 380 million in the outer circle. thanks for your patience... long day.