The unexpected benefits of learning a second language. It is a wellknown fact that chinese is the most spoken language in the world with the number of 1. Top 100 languages by total number of native speakers in 2007 rank country. The languages currently spoken and written in our world are as diverse as the societies making use of. Three of the 44 romance languages are in the top ten most spoken languages. Of the 430 million people worldwide who speak english, 56% are not native speakers. Aug 30, 2020 english is the most spoken language in the world, with nearly 1. Russian, like the rest of the languages we speak of, extends its borders beyond its country of origin. Guinea, where there are an estimated 832 languages spoken by a population of around 3. The ethnologues most recent list of languages by total number of speakers this is not a list of native speakers.
Language families an introduction to language families including all the ones mentioned in the above table. Spanish is the second most spoken language in the world in terms of. The earliest forms of english were introduced to britain by a succession of invaders. Worlds languages traced back to single african mother. This is the list they have for the top 10 most widely spoken languages. Mandarin spanish english hindi portuguese bengali russian japanese german wu china javanese telugu marathi korean tamil french urdu yue kantonese turkish.
List of languages by total number of speakers wikipedia. Feb 23, 2021 4th most spoken language in the world. Since founding alcantara communications, she has conducted policy research on languages issues for clients including the. Top 10 most spoken languages in the world 2020 indias stuffs. In contrast, only 17% of mandarin speakers know it as a second language, perhaps because it is one of the most challenging languages to learn. Hindi is one of 461 languages currently spoken in india. The most widely spoken and likely the fastest spreading world language today is english, with over 1. In fact, more than a quarter of us speak one of just three languages as our native tongue, according to data from ethnologue, a database of languages. We all know that there are more than 100s of main languages in the world. Oct 18, 2018 africans are making french a truly global language. Top languages in the global information production university of. Are you aware that the majority of the world s more than 7,000 languages originate from just 11 ancient languages. The evolution and development of the world s writing systems with many examples of scripts. Nov 10, 2012 languages are the most important and easiest way to transmit expressions to one another.
The most spoken languages in the world fluent city. The 10 most spoken languages in the world pakistan defence. It is difficult to define what constitutes a language as opposed to a dialect. Also hindi is understood by most of the population, its not their only spoken language. Spanish is the fourth most commonly spoken language in the world. Jul 18, 2020 billions of people speak some form of chinese language as first. Ranking the world s current top languages is not just an idle pastime. Hindi, primarily spoken in india, is the mother tongue of over 260 million people.
In terms of numbers of first language speakers, mandarin chinese is easily the most predominant language in the world today, and collectively, all chinese languages total 1,197 million native speakers. May 29, 2014 the most commonly spoken heritage language in palo alto schools is chinese, followed by spanish, korean, hebrew, and russian, but other languages, including, laotian, arabic, armenian, persian, turkish, hungarian, and tongan are spoken as well. The term indohittite is used by scholars who believe that hittite and the other anatolian languages are not just one branch of indoeuropean but rather a branch coordinate with all the rest put together. Number five on our list of most spoken languages in the world is hindi. There are 23 officially recognised languages1, more than 60 indigenous regional and minority languages, and many nonindigenous languages spoken by migrant communities. That policy has helped millions of people who do business with global companies, go out for studies or work in other countries tremendously. That makes the average number of speakers around 4,500, possibly the lowest of any area of the world. It does matter how major languages stand and evolve in relation to each other. French is worlds fifth spoken language thanks to africans. For more information on language distribution and importance of world languages, the world economic forum provides helpful charts.
Mandarin chinese is the most spoken language in the world. Apr 23, 2015 about 3 percent of the world s population accounts for 96 percent of all languages spoken today. Languages spoken by more than 10 million people archived 20091031 encarta list, based on data from ethnologue, but some figures e. The 10 most spoken languages in the world page 6 pakistan. English is not the most frequently spoken mother tongue in the world, and is not.
And they are also the dominant languages of global commerce, diplomacy and scholarship. Wherever you travel,you see english signs and advertisements. Information users and information production in most spoken languages. Jul 06, 2016 as an official language of the united nations and the liturgical language of over 1. Additionally, the cia world factbook provides a detailed breakdown of what languages are spoken in each country.
Russian is the most spoken slavic language in the world. Mar 17, 2021 english is the most spoken language in the world, and is the global lingua franca, or common language. The world is growing closer and this historical development is matched by largescale linguistic adjustments, the most dramatic of which being the explosive growth of the english language. But the ten most spoken languages are used natively by close to 40% of the earths population. French has moved up a place to become the world s fifth most spoken language, thanks largely to the millions of africans who speak it each day. These languages belong to between 40 and 50 distinct families. Unesco has a way of classifying endangered languages with few speakers left. Hindiurdu over 310 million people, speak one of the two. Languages spoken in the united states 2019 statista. Hundreds of millions of people have learned them as a second or third language. Chinese, spanish and english are estimated to be the three most spoken languages in the world. Greek is mostly spoken in greece, albania, and cyprus, by roughly million people.
Spanish is the primary language spoken at home by almost 37 million people in the u. Go on a trip through language history with this word. Now, check out the most popular languages in the world below. The worlds languages, in 7 maps and charts washington post. Theres still ongoing debate whether hindi or urdu are a single language, hindustani, a dispute dating back to the 19th century. Mandarin, which ranks second, is only half as potent. Regardless, if you love languages, its a great language. Language families in many cases, it is impossible to come up with a clear classification 700 languages in papuanew guinea, often unrelated to each other several hundred languages of australian aborigines.
French is now the fifth most spoken world language and. The 10 most spoken languages in the world 2021 dvo. Lets now dive into the top 10 most spoken languages overall. The 20 most spoken languages in the world in 2021 lingoda.
The most ges, generally t of ethnologu etailed classif anguages. Its related closely to ukrainian and belarusian and more distantly related to languages like serbian, croatian, bulgarian, czech, polish, slovak, and bosnian. Ethnologue 2019, 22nd edition this section needs to be updated. Ranking of the worlds 100 most spoken languages basel institute. It comes as no surprise that english reigns supreme, with over 1. Explore the tree of these eleven linguistic roots and see which widely spoken languages developed from each. Its also a romance language developed from latin and related to the modern spanish. The third edition, published in 2010, lists some 2,500 endangered languages and provides analytical reports by region. The chinese language belongs to the chinesetibetan language family and is actually a group. This is the most popular language spoken in the world.
Languages are fluid, and constantly evolvingaltogether, the 100 most spoken languages paint a unique picture across centuries of a changing world. With roughly 153 million native speakers, russian is the eighth most spoken language in the world. Attempt to make a top 10 of the most widely spoken languages in the world. Get world languages list pdf for more than 190 official languages of the world. This also isnt comprehensive with bilingual speakers or speakers of endangered languages, or speakers.
There are also many different writing systems, although we dont cover those here. Read more languages spoken at home other than english in the united states by number of speakers in 2019. Mandarin mandarin is standard form of chinese based on the particular mandarin dialect spoken in beijing, with some lexical and syntactic influence from other mandarin dialects. Bengali script is actually the fifth most used script in the world, and it is the second most spoken language in india. The language that counts that most number of native speakers is mandarin chinese, the official language of china and taiwan, at close to 1 billion. The 15 most spoken languages and why you should learn them. Most spoken languages in the world a mosalingua top 10. Bengali is spoken in bangladesh and several states of india. Its the official language of 67 countries, and is also an official language of many large international organizations. Top 10 most spoken languages in the world 2021 freestudu4u. The top five to ten spoken languages in the world are very close in number of speakers, ranging from 199280 million speakers. It an official language in russian, belarus, kazakhstan, and kyrgyzstan. The second most common language spoken in the united states is spanish or spanish creole, which over 41,75 million people spoke at home in 2019. Other languages that are enormous and close contenders to the most spoken languages mentioned above.
May, 2020 chinese is the most spoken language in the world. Mar 30, 2021 this statistic shows the most spoken languages in the world. Jul 11, 2019 language is a primary parameter of human existence as it helps in effective communication between human beings. These include the united nations, the european union, the world trade organization, and the international monetary fund. The most spoken languages in the world 2020 university magazine. Moreover, just 15 of them account for half of the languages spoken in the world. How many people speak dutch, and where is it spoken. With 258 million speakers, the language is well known in russia. The world has more than 6800 languages spoken throughout it, some of which are spoken by a large proportion of world population, while others are spoken by only a minority. Bengali is an indoaryan language, which means it belongs to the indoeuropean family just like english and the romance languages. Which are the two most spoken languages in the world. Indoeuropean languages definition, map, characteristics. She was involved in several european research projects on multilingualism and is a member of the european commissions languages in education and training group.
So weve covered the 12 most spoken languages in the world above. This is a list of languages by the total number of speakers. The most spoken languages in the world 2020 university. Urdu is the official language of islamic republic of pakistan. Jan 20, 2021 a ranking of the most spoken languages across the world can be accessed here. The eu, although it has limited influence because educational and language policies are the responsibility of. Linguistic diversity in northern california languages of. It is spoken in china and some countries of east asia. English is now the language most widely taught as a foreign language in over 100 countries,such as china,russia,germany,spain,egypt and brazil and in most. Some languages, such as chinese and arabic, cover several mutually unintelligible varieties and are sometimes considered single languages and sometimes language families. List of languages by number of native speakers wikipedia. Here is a list of top 10 most spoken languages around the world. Ethnologue, the biggest authority on languages on the web, estimates that there are over 7,000 spoken languages in the world. Tips infographic that shows the world s 100 most spoken languages.
Spoken languages in the world 7,000 different languages are estimated to be spoken around the world. It has 218 million native speakers and around 11 million nonnative speakers. But in the past 15 years, spanish speakers have increased so much it has overtaken it. Because like we said, when ranking the most spoken languages it can somehow be difficult to get everyone to agree. Mandarin chinese, hindi, spanish, and french round out the top five. Borrowed words in english a listing of over 1800 words that have been borrowed into english from other languages. English is the largest language in the world, if you count both native and non native speakers. English the good ole english language used to be the second most spoken language in the world. Mar 20, 2020 with a total number of around 230 million speakers, portuguese closes our list of the most spoken languages in the world. It produced the literary likes of dostoyevsky, nabokov, chekhov, gogol, tolstoy and pushkin. There are many language families around the world and most known languages.
It produced the literary likes of dostoyevsky, nabokov, chekhov, gogol, tolstoy and. This statistic shows the most spoken languages in the world. Out of all languages in the world, 2,000 have fewer than 1,000 native speakers. English has been ranked as number third most spoken language in almost all countries of world. If you count only native speakers, mandarin chinese is the largest. Thirty regional dialects of arabic are spoken across 5 million square milesfrom morocco in the west to iraq in the east. It is the dominant language of three g7 nations usa, uk and canada, and british legacy has given it a global footprint. The most difficult languages in the world and the most spoken languages in the world, occupying the eighth position.
With thousands of beautiful languages, these 20 most common languages are just the tip of the iceberg. We can say that without language it is impossible to understand anything from another person. But there are just so many languages in the world with enormous numbers of speakers many of which most people havent even heard of and couldnt locate on a map. Top 10 ancient languages in the world best toppers. Languages let the people to express their views by just speaking or writing. Top ten most widely spoken languages, by first language speakers. Indoeuropean languages, family of languages spoken in most of europe and areas of european settlement and in much of southwest and south asia. Please update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. Within the european union there are many languages spoken. Other than china many countries speaking chinese language. Because these languages are spoken in a single although very large country. Globish and the empire american journal of neuroradiology.
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