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Unit 2 English around the world Ⅰ.阅读理解 (2016·江南十校联考) The number of American students who learned a language other than English decreased by about 100,000 between 2009 and 2017. For many, taking a class in economics might seem more beneficial than a French course. But is it real? The Chinese dialects combined already have more native speakers than any other language, followed by Hindi and Urdu. English comes next with 527 million native speakers. Arabic is spoken by nearly 100 million more native speakers than Spanish, which has 389 million speakers. Which languages will dominate the future? Predictions vary, depending on your location and purpose. You want to make money in growth markets? These will be your languages. A recent U．K.focused report features languages spoken in the socalled BRIC countries—Brazil, Russia, India, China—that are usually known as the world's biggest emerging economies. Hindi, Bengali, Urdu and Indonesian will control much of the business world by 2050, followed by Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic and Russian. If you want to get the most money out of your language course, studying one of the languages listed above is probably a safe bet. You want to speak to as many people as possible? How about Chinese, Spanish or French? 1．Chinese. Although Chinese has three times more native speakers than English, it's still not as evenly spread over the world. Moreover, Chinese is rarely used in sciences and difficult to read and write. | 
