[originaltext] Native English speakers outnumbered LONDON - The accented E

Native English speakers outnumbered
   LONDON - The accented English of fluent foreigners such as Latino singer Ricky Martin or actress Juliette Binoche is usurping British and American English as the dominant form of the language.
   This week the British Government will announce that the number of people with English as a second language has overtaken the number who speak it as their native tongue.
   According to the figures, by the end of the year as many as 750 million people will speak English well enough to use it for business, and as many as a billion people are thought to be learning English at any given time.
   The British Council statistics have been seized on by Education and Employment Secretary David Blunkett, who will tell a meeting of business leaders on Tuesday to capitalise on their advantage as native speakers.
   English-language books, films and TV shows are worth nearly pounds sterling 5 billion (dollars 7.2bn) to the British economy, with education materials alone worth pounds sterling 1.2bn (dollars 1.7bn). But the rush to share Shakespeare’s tongue may see British schoolchildren lose the motivation to learn foreign languages.
   Insiders say the drive to make English the global lingua franca comes directly from Tony Blair. The so-called "blair Initiative" was launched in 1998 after the Prime Minister was told off by the Mayor of Shanghai, Xu Kuangdi, for failing to promote English abroad. On his return, Blair ordered the British Council to remedy the situation and allocated pounds sterling 5 million (dollars 7.2m) for English- language initiatives. The anglophile Xu, who lived as a student in London in the Eighties, said the French, Germans and Americans were far better at promoting their culture. They may also soon be far better at speaking English.