**English** was born in the United Kingdom but today belongs to the modern world as the main international language of business and politics. That’s why it’s not very surprising to find English as the world’s most spoken language, with 1.5 billion speakers as of 2023.
In second place is **Mandarin**, the most spoken Chinese language dialect with 1.1 billion speakers. Originating in North China, it has become the most spoken language in China and Taiwan, as well as having millions of speakers spread across Southeast Asia and the world.
India is also represented in this ranking, but despite being the world’s [most populated country](https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/visualizing-indias-population-growth-from-2022-2100/), its speakers are spread out over multiple different languages. **Hindi** is the main language spoken in North India and an official language of the government, but other languages like **Bengali** are widely spoken in other regions, in this case in East India (and neighboring Bangladesh).
It’s also notable how languages from [former colonial powers](https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/colonial-shipping-lanes/)—like English, Spanish, French, and Portuguese—all have hundreds of millions of speakers, despite their mother countries accounting for a fraction of that total.
I feel it is wrong, Arabic is spoken by 400+ M, Hindi 570, French 450M
Learn portuguese to confuse people 😂
How about native languages? I think Mandarin would come out on top then.
You could say English is the true *lingua franca*.
9 out 12 are Indo-European languages, pretty impressive for one language family.
Turkish is spoken by Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Mongolia, Azerbaijan, Turkey etc… I don’t think this is taken into account.
That English figure has to include speakers of varying abilities to reach that number. No way 1.5 billion speak it fluently.
🇩🇪 YEAH GERMANY 🇩🇪
Why is arabic always written wrong like that ?
Why is Arabic written backwards in Arabic? Its meant to be عربي not ي برع
I have been learning Spanish for 3 years now, pretty happy with my progress. And i also plan on learning other languages after Spanish, but still not sure which one I should pick. French, Japanese or Portuguese
What would be really interesting to know is the intersection of those languages for each individual person.
E.g. how many English speakers can’t speak none of the other most popular languages.
Same for others, e.g. how many French speakers are not speaking English nor other popular languages…
French is still spoken by a lot of people, I see.
Yine ayrilikci bir tablo Turkce yok 🙂
Brazil and Angola alone are 250M people that speak Portuguese. How on earth only 264M speak Portuguese?
There should be minimum 10 mio Turkish people settled only in EU, and Turkic languages is not in list.. okay.
Genuine question, isnt urdu hindi with a different script?
And yet at the last ICJ hearing, two people representing France insisted upon speaking in French whereas everyone else spoke in English.
The word Hindi has been incorrectly written.
It should be हिंदी or हिन्दी.
Portuguese can’t be right: the population of Brazil, Angola and Mozambique is higher than 264M
Since this is about languages **spoken**, shouldn’t Hindi and Urdu count as one language since the main difference between both is the **writing** system?
I guess Hindi and Urdu speakers can be counted as single language as hindustani language rather than as two entities
Does ‘standart arabic’ really exist?
Every arab country, if not a region, has its local version, sometimes not intelligible with each other. It’s like we keep talking about latin to designate French, Spanish and Italian.
Scary that Mandarin comes close to English which is spoken worldwide.
25 comments
These figures come from [Ethnologue](https://www.ethnologue.com/insights/ethnologue200/), which publishes a list of the largest languages every year.
**English** was born in the United Kingdom but today belongs to the modern world as the main international language of business and politics. That’s why it’s not very surprising to find English as the world’s most spoken language, with 1.5 billion speakers as of 2023.
In second place is **Mandarin**, the most spoken Chinese language dialect with 1.1 billion speakers. Originating in North China, it has become the most spoken language in China and Taiwan, as well as having millions of speakers spread across Southeast Asia and the world.
India is also represented in this ranking, but despite being the world’s [most populated country](https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/visualizing-indias-population-growth-from-2022-2100/), its speakers are spread out over multiple different languages. **Hindi** is the main language spoken in North India and an official language of the government, but other languages like **Bengali** are widely spoken in other regions, in this case in East India (and neighboring Bangladesh).
It’s also notable how languages from [former colonial powers](https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/colonial-shipping-lanes/)—like English, Spanish, French, and Portuguese—all have hundreds of millions of speakers, despite their mother countries accounting for a fraction of that total.
I feel it is wrong, Arabic is spoken by 400+ M, Hindi 570, French 450M
Learn portuguese to confuse people 😂
How about native languages? I think Mandarin would come out on top then.
You could say English is the true *lingua franca*.
9 out 12 are Indo-European languages, pretty impressive for one language family.
Turkish is spoken by Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Mongolia, Azerbaijan, Turkey etc… I don’t think this is taken into account.
That English figure has to include speakers of varying abilities to reach that number. No way 1.5 billion speak it fluently.
🇩🇪 YEAH GERMANY 🇩🇪
Why is arabic always written wrong like that ?
Why is Arabic written backwards in Arabic? Its meant to be عربي not ي برع
I have been learning Spanish for 3 years now, pretty happy with my progress. And i also plan on learning other languages after Spanish, but still not sure which one I should pick. French, Japanese or Portuguese
What would be really interesting to know is the intersection of those languages for each individual person.
E.g. how many English speakers can’t speak none of the other most popular languages.
Same for others, e.g. how many French speakers are not speaking English nor other popular languages…
French is still spoken by a lot of people, I see.
Yine ayrilikci bir tablo Turkce yok 🙂
Brazil and Angola alone are 250M people that speak Portuguese. How on earth only 264M speak Portuguese?
There should be minimum 10 mio Turkish people settled only in EU, and Turkic languages is not in list.. okay.
Genuine question, isnt urdu hindi with a different script?
And yet at the last ICJ hearing, two people representing France insisted upon speaking in French whereas everyone else spoke in English.
The word Hindi has been incorrectly written.
It should be हिंदी or हिन्दी.
Portuguese can’t be right: the population of Brazil, Angola and Mozambique is higher than 264M
Since this is about languages **spoken**, shouldn’t Hindi and Urdu count as one language since the main difference between both is the **writing** system?
I guess Hindi and Urdu speakers can be counted as single language as hindustani language rather than as two entities
Does ‘standart arabic’ really exist?
Every arab country, if not a region, has its local version, sometimes not intelligible with each other. It’s like we keep talking about latin to designate French, Spanish and Italian.
Scary that Mandarin comes close to English which is spoken worldwide.