Whether you want to travel around the world, you’re interested in doing business abroad or you want to seduce people wherever you go, you might want to know which are the 10 Most Widely Spoken Languages In The World.
In some point of the history of literature, science fiction promised us a universal translator, and it kept on doing it over the years. Unfortunately for us, we’re extremely far from the Babel fish or from the TARDIS. Of course, technology developers are working non stop to create a tool that allows us to understand every other language in the word. But until now, the only device to communicate between different countries and cultures in a successful way is by studying different languages.
So if you’re planning to go back to school to take some language classes, you might want to think it through before choosing which language you want to learn. You might like the musicality of Russian, you might like Italian speakers or maybe you just want to know what do those catchy Ricky Martin songs say. All of these and plenty of other reasons are good enough to sign up for some language class. But another strategy is to ensure the most speakers the better. If that’s what you are looking for, knowing which are the most widelyspoken languages in the world will be decisive. Of course, you can always play safe. If you’re a native English speaker you should check The 5 Easiest Second Languages To Learn For English Speakers .
When it comes to making rankings of most widely spoken languages in the world, the variables can be plenty. First you need to establish who counts as a speaker and who doesn’t. You can count the native speakers, you can count the fluid speakers, you can count intermediate students, etc. It is also important the amount of places where it is spoken. There are some languages with big populations spoken in really isolated places, while other languages have less speakers but they are scattered all around the globe. And all these variables have changed along the years.
According to the 18th edition of Ethnologue released in 2015, the languages listed below are the first ten languages of the world of population of first-language speakers, which means The 10 Most Widely Spoken Languages In The World as a mother tongue.
So let’s see what we’ve got…
10.Lahnda
This might be surprising: with 88.7 million native speakers, the macro language of Pakistan is the number ten in the list of most spoken languages in the world. As plenty of other languages around the world, the autonomy of Lahnda as a proper language is constantly being discussed. Because some institutions consider Lahnda as a Punjabi dialect. But that’s not the case of Etnologue. It would be good to ask Lahnda speakers whether it is an autonomy language or not.
9.Japanesse
There are 128 million native speakers of Japanese around the world! Japan has always been an amazing place to look at: with a completely different culture from what occidental people know. Japan is the birthplace of plenty of amazing things: sushi, manga, anime, j pop, and Evangelion. The thing is that Japan simply can’t stay out of any list as you can imagine. Yet, if you’re planning to learn a language to travel, you should take into account that it’s also listed as one of The Most Expensive Countries In The World
8.Russian
Wouldn’t it be a shame if Tolstoi ran out of readers? Well, don’t worry, it’s not going to happen, at least for a while for there are 166 millions native speakers of Russian. And they sound so good!
7.Bengalí
Bengalí speakers are nothing less than 189 million! Speakers of Bengalí are usually situated in Bangladesh and India. There’s a lot of languages in the list spoken in India. Up to here we’ve been meeting languages all over the oriental side of the planisphere. It’s quite funny if you think about the fact that we tend to say things as “English is the language that allows you to communicate with the rest of the world…”.
6.Portuguese
Now we move to the occidental part of the planisphere. Whether we are talking about Portugal or Brazil, Portuguese has 203 millions native speakers. Which is great because they sound awesome.
5.Arabic
Here’s another musical language on the list. Arabic has 242 million speakers spread all over the east of the world. With more than 24 different varieties, from Moroccan to Egyptian or Syrian, they’re all considered the same macro language.
4.Hindi
With 260 million speakers Hindi is the fourth most widely spoken language in the world. And it’s the 3 time India appears on the list. So, if you want to try some luck on Bollywood, here you have 3 languages that can help you in casting auditions.
3.English
In the third place we have the language you’re reading right now. English has 335 million native speakers around the world and plenty other millions of second language speakers. And it’s also the language of David Bowie.
2.Spanish
Spanish is spoken by 399 million people as a mother tongue. It is also the language of tango, salsa and cumbia, all of them amazing rhythms to dance to.
1.Chinese
Drumrolls please! At the very top of our list we have the unimaginable amount of 1.197 million native speakers of Chinese! There are more speakers of mandarin than all Spanish and English speakers put together. Watching these numbers, it seems to be pretty clear what class we should start.
So that was the list of the 10 Most Widely Spoken Languages In the World. Are you still hesitating on what language are you going to study next?
