Languages are spoken in many places. There are languages that are more spoken than others due to several factors such as population. Let’s look at the 5 most spoken languages in the world.
The Number 1 most spoken language is surprisingly English. While the number of people whose first language is English is less than Mandarin Chinese with 372 million compared to 929 million, the total number of English speakers is greater than Mandarin Chinese at 1.4 billion to 1.1 billion. There are a few factors such as the large number of countries that have English as an official language at 67 with countries such as the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Pakistan, Philippines, South Africa, etc. Another factor is Tourism because if a person would learn English, they would know a language that is official in 67 places. Also the United States is quite popular.
The 2nd most spoken language is Mandarin Chinese. The major factor for this to be the 2nd most spoken language is because China has a huge population of native speakers. However, the reason this isn’t the number 1 is because there are a couple of other languages spoken in different parts of China like Cantonese. Also there aren’t a lot of Second language speakers of Mandarin Chinese.
The 3rd most spoken language is Hindi at 602 million. The major factor is that India also has a huge population. However India has 22 official languages so not everyone in India speaks Hindi.
The 4th Most spoken language is Spanish at 548 million because there are 21 countries that speak it. Spanish colonization also spread the language around the world.
The 5th most spoken language is French at 274 million. While the native speakers of French is low at 79 million, there are a lot more second language speakers than native speakers. This is due to the major factor of culture. France has quite an interesting culture to learn about and visit. Also France had a lot of colonies so the language spread to 28 other countries.
Let it be known that these are not the only languages around as there are a lot of languages around the world. It’s just pretty interesting to know what is the most spoken language in the world.
