The 10 languages with the largest number of speakers.
Have you ever wondered which are the most spoken languages in the world? It is currently estimated that there are around 7,000 different languages, but the vast majority are spoken by less than 100,000 people in the world.
The popularity of a language depends largely on usefulness and geographic location. In addition, the way we measure the extent of the world’s languages can vary greatly depending on whether we look at total or native speakers.
On behalf of this, determining the total number of speakers of a language is very complicated, due to the fact that many times the sources are unreliable or outdated, therefore, we will focus on the total number of native speakers to establish this ranking.
Do you want to know them? You will be surprised!
Ranking of the most spoken languages in the world
10. Urdu – This language is mainly spoken in Pakistan and India, which has around 230 million speakers.
9. Portuguese – It is the mother tongue of Portugal, Brazil, São Tomé and Príncipe, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, and Angola, and is spoken by 258 million people.
8. Russian – It is the official language of Russia and one of the official languages of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, and has 258 million speakers.
7. French – It is the official language in 29 countries, most of them part of the community of French-speaking countries known as the Francophonie. It is spoken by 267 million people.
6. Bengali – It is the national and official language of Bangladesh, and one of the 23 official languages recognized by the Republic of India; it has 268 million speakers.
5. Modern Standard Arabic – There are 25 countries that claim Arabic as an official or co-official language, including Algeria, Bahrain, Chad, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. It is spoken by 274 million people.
4. Spanish – There are 21 countries in the world that have Spanish as their official language: Spain, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico, among others; it has 543 million speakers.
3. Hindi – Hindi is the official language in India and is spoken as a mother tongue by the population of seven other countries. It is spoken by 600 million people.
2. Mandarin Chinese – Mandarin Chinese is the official language of mainland China and Taiwan and is also one of the official languages of Singapore. The language is spoken by 1.12 billion people.
1. English – English is spoken in approximately 57 countries around the world. The language has 1.48 million speakers.
What do you think of this list? Were you surprised by the presence of any of these languages?
The fact of knowing the most widely used languages in the world will help us to choose, for our own self-learning, the ones that best suit our work and lifestyle needs. What is unquestionable is that learning any language enriches and promotes integration in different regions of the world, making those who speak more than one language a true citizen of the world.
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