Most Spoken Languages in The World 2019
There are over 7,000 languages in the world, each with their own histories and sounds.
All of these should be celebrated. But some languages are much more widely spoken than the rest.
Determining what are the most spoken languages in the world is a more difficult task than you might imagine.
But do you need to learn each one of them? The answer is obviously no, but you can learn the language that is popular, promising in terms of career, and life-changing.
When tallied according to number of native speakers only, these are the 5 most spoken languages in the world.
1. Chinese
People sometimes speak of “Chinese” as if it’s a single language. It’s a group of related languages, of which Mandarin Chinese is by far the biggest. It’s an official language in the People’s Republic of China, the Republic of China (Taiwan), and Singapore. Mandarin Chinese is the largest language in the world when counting only first language (native) speakers. This is due to the significant population of China. Numbers vary widely — Ethnologue…
2. Spanish
Sí señor! By number of native speakers, Spanish is the second biggest language in the world. If we were only to look at native speakers, Spanish has its nose in front of English with about 400 million speakers. If you want a language that will open a whole continent to you, Spanish is your best bet. The language now known as Spanish originated in the Castile region of Spain. For this reason, it’s sometimes referred to as “Castilian” — castellano…
3. English
If you’re reading this article, you may be one of the 360 million-odd native English speakers, or one of the halves a billion people who speak it as a second language. Thanks to the historical dominance of the British Empire — and, more recently, the economic and cultural clout of the United States — English is well-established as the world’s lingua franca (if only there were other contenders for an international language) of business, travel and…
4. Hindustani
Hindustani is the collective name for Hindi and Urdu — two dialects of the same language. India has 23 official languages, with Hindi/Urdu chief among them. Whether this is one language — Hindustani — or two dialects, is still fiercely debated. Hindi is spoken across northern and central India and is the official language of the Indian government. Urdu is primarily spoken in Pakistan. While Hindi and Urdu have differences in vocabulary…
5. Arabic
Arabic is the official language of 26 countries, although some have argued that it’s not really one language, but several. Recent numbers put Arabic at around 250 million native speakers. But this is another instance of numbers not telling the full tale: Arabic, like Chinese, is so vastly different in its respective dialects as to be effectively several languages, grouped as one for the sake of convenience. Modern Standard Arabic…
