29 Aug The World’s Most Widely-Spoken Languages (Ranked)

What is the most spoken language in the world? Perhaps this question has recently come to your mind. This is an important question with lots of implications. Its also a question with an answer that is a moving target – it is constantly in flux as populations, demographics and migration patterns shift. And in fact its a question that can have multiple answers depending on how we specify the question.

Why an understanding of language popularity matters?

Understanding what is the most spoken language in the world has business and economic implications as well as just personal and social ones.  For example, if you want to introduce your business to the international market or sell your products and services outside your country to the broader international market, then you should have a good understanding of world demographics.

In a simple sense, knowing the most spoken language worldwide strengthens your communication skills, you can understand which language you should have more hold on and on which you should pay less attention.

So without further ado, let us tell you the most famous languages ​​according to the worldwide ranking.  This is a worldwide statistic that is always fluctuating a little bit in terms of the absolute number of speakers, but the relative ranking remains almost the same.

What is the most spoken language in the world?

Let’s now answer the question directly – What is the most spoken language in the world?  English is the most spoken language in the world, with approximately 1.5 billion people who speak this language.

However, if we only consider native speakers, then Mandarin Chinese is the most popular with over 1 billion native speakers.

Now let’s consider English and Mandarin Chinese alongside the other most commonly spoken languages in the world.

1. English

No one should be surprised to know that English is the most spoken language in the world.  It is a global language whose total number of people spoken worldwide is more than 1.5 billion.

Of these numbers, there are only about 400 million people whose English is their native language and roughly 1 billion people have adopted it as a secondary or international language.

The internet itself largely speaks English – as more than 60% of the data on the Internet is present in English only.

If a person goes abroad and he does not know the language there, then English is the only option left for them.  This language is also used for the biggest work in the world like business, tourism, and communication of technology.

2. Mandarin Chinese

With over more than 1.1 billion speakers in the world, Mandarin Chinese is the second most spoken language in the world. However, if we talk about only native speakers then Mandarin Chinese is the world’s most spoken language with over the number of 918 Million Native speakers.

3. Hindi

Hindi is spoken in almost every state of India and it is also the official language of the country. It is understood in almost every part of the country. That’s the reason it is the third most spoken language in the world with over 615 million speakers. There are a total of 341 million native speakers and the rest are non-native speakers.

4. Spanish

The total number of Spanish speakers is 534 Million out of 460 million are native speakers and the rest are non-native speakers. It secures the 4th rank of most spoken languages in the world. In terms of native speakers, it is the second most spoken language after Mandarin Chinese in the world.

5. French

French secures the 5th rank of most spoken language in the world. The total number of French speakers is 280 million. Where only 77 million people are native speakers.

After the French language, Arabic, Bengali, Russian, Portuguese, and Indonesian come on the list respectively. So, ranking must have given you an idea about which language you should pay more attention to.  If you are a language learner, then from this ranking you must have got an idea of ​​which language you can try to learn next.