Most Spoken Languages in the World – English

Across the globe, more than 7,100 languages are spoken, contributing to the world’s diversity. Busuu, a language spoken by 8 people in Cameroon, is an endangered language. In contrast, there are languages spoken by millions of people. English remains the most frequently spoken language (primary and second language). More than 1.4 billion people speak English around the world. According to various studies, there are more than 7,000 languages spoken around the world. However, only 2 of them have a population of one billion or more: English (1,132 million speakers) and Mandarin (1,117 million speakers). 

English( 1,132 Million Speakers)

• English is spoken by roughly 1.132 million people worldwide. It is the official language of 67 nations and a number of major international organisations. The United Nations, European Union, World Trade Organisation, and International Monetary Fund are among these organisations.
• English is the most learned language globally, with 55% of the internet written in English. It works as a common language among people from different cultures and ethnicities.
• The language family is Germanic, a subfamily of Indo-European.
• Shakespeare, considered to be the greatest playwright of all time, added 1,700 words to the English language by adding verb forms to nouns and the other way around, joining words, and adding prefixes and suffixes to others.

Mandarin (1,117 Million Speakers)

• Mandarin is spoken by about 1.12 billion people and has been used in China for over 3,000 years. 
• Singapore and Taiwan have both adopted Mandarin as their official languages. Although other languages (such as Cantonese) are spoken in China, Mandarin is the most widely spoken. 
• Mandarin is the language with the greatest number of native speakers. The language family is Sino-Tibetan.
• Mandarin is the world’s second most spoken language. It is the official language of Singapore, Taiwan, and China, as well as one of the United Nations’ six official languages. 
• Mandarin is a tonal language, which means that the meaning of a word varies depending on how it is spoken.
• It is undoubtedly one of the most difficult languages to learn, with a character set of around 50,000. According to research, you only need roughly 2,500 characters to read nearly 98% of Mandarin.

Hindi (615 Million Speakers)

• Hindi is one of the 22 scheduled languages in India. There are numerous dialects of Hindi, depending on the region where it’s spoken. 
• Around the world, different dialects of Hindi are spoken, such as in Fiji (where it is an official language), as well as Trinidad & Tobago, Suriname, and Guyana in the Caribbean. 
• The language family is Indo-Aryan, a subfamily of Indo-Europeans. It is a relatively young language. Hindi is written in the Devanagari script.
• If you speak English, you’re probably already familiar with Hindi. Words like “mantra,” “karma,” “yoga,” and “cheetah,” among many others were derived from Hindi and adopted into English during the colonial period.

Spanish (534 Million Speakers)

• Spanish, commonly known as Castilian in Spain, is the official language of 20 countries. It is an official language in the United Nations and other international organisations such as the African Union and the European Union.
• Spanish has influenced many other languages, including Tagalog. Spanish is the second most spoken language in the United States. In the United States, there are more than 40 million Spanish speakers! 
• Spanish has also been more popular in pop culture in recent years. There’s a good possibility you’ll hear some Spanish-language music if you listen to an English-language radio or television station.

Conclusion

In this article, we have discussed the most widely spoken languages globally. Languages depict linguistic diversity and cultural richness. Languages are widely spoken among people all over the world due to certain reasons like globalisation, population and the economic power of the nations. English (1,132 million speakers) is the most spoken language globally. Mandarin (1,117 million speakers) is the second most spoken language. Arabic, Cohran, Russian, Hindi, Telugu, Urdu, Armenian, Greek, and many other languages are also widely spoken.