There are over 7 500 languages in the world. However, some of them are not well known, while others are used globally by many people. In this article, you will find the six most spoken languages in the world, with some information about them. Let’s get started!
English
English is the most spoken language across the world. It is used by 1,132 million speakers, including 379 million native speakers and 753 million non-native speakers.
Nowadays, English is considered a lingua franca, a universal language of the modern world. In technology, business, and tourism, it’s considered the most important and universal language. What’s interesting is that if you are bilingual and speak English and Spanish, you can understand 1 in 3 people who use the Internet! You can also understand 60% of all the content that is published on the internet.
Mandarin
Mandarin is used by 918 million native speakers and 199 million non-native speakers. In total, 1,117 million people in the world. If only native speakers were taken into account, Mandarin would take first place on this list.
Fun fact: Mandarin is a set of dialects of the Chinese language. The speakers of the dialects can understand each other.
Because of the economic development of China, Mandarin is becoming more and more popular in the business world. It’s worth learning if you are thinking about working in global business.
Hindi
Hindi is used by 341 million native and 274 million non-native speakers. That means that 615 million people know this language, which makes it the third most spoken language in the world.
It is one of the 22 official languages of India. In India, there are more than 1,600 languages that coexist together. This is why the number of non-native Hindu speakers is so high.
Spanish
There are 534 million Spanish speakers in the world, and 460 million are native. That means that there are only 74 million non-native speakers. When it comes to native speakers alone, Spanish is in second place as the most widely spoken language in the world.
The spread of Spanish to Latin America, Africa, and Asia was caused by colonization. Nowadays, it is a language that students often choose at school. In the United States, due to the migration of many people from Latin America, it is the second most popular language, next to English.
French
French is spoken by 280 million people worldwide, but only 77 million people are native speakers. The rest, 203 million, are non-native.
Similarly to the Spanish language, French spread around the world because of colonization. Nowadays, it’s the official language in 29 countries.
French is considered the language of culture, and many people consider it very romantic.
Arabic
Arabic is a language that is used by 245 million native and 29 million non-native speakers, which gives us 274 million speakers worldwide.
It’s the official language of 26 countries. It has many dialects, depending on the region in which it is used. Arabic is also the language used in Islam.
People who are interested in business in the Arabic world might want to invest their time in learning this interesting language.
