It's actually closer to 1.5 billion TOTAL speakers of English. Most English speaking people learned it as a second language.

Edit: billion not million

This a thousand times. I mainly lurked on Reddit and I'm trying to actually contribute here. Sometimes I fear that no one will care what I have to say, but someone needs to start the conversation.

What crazy thing happening are you guys screaming about?

Thanks. Not sure why I typed that lol

I don't think it's 嗎, looks more like 吧 to me, which also has question like properties. But you're definitely right about the question mark not being included until much later. The character alone says it's a question.