![]() ![]() Starting in the 15th century, avid Portuguese traders and conquerors brought their language to Africa, Asia and the Americas. This is another language whose reach owes much to its colonial past. By the next century, the population is projected to double while 15 percent of the land area is expected to disappear below rising seas. It is the language of Kolkata, the Andaman Islands, fabulous sweets and 130-odd million Bangladeshis - many of whom are extremely vulnerable to climate change. The Partition of Bengal by the British in 1947 divided (mainly Hindu) West Bengal, now part of India, from its (mainly Muslim) counterpart East Bengal, now Bangladesh. Bengali - 234 Million Native SpeakersĪdmit it: you didn’t expect Bengali to be on the list of most spoken languages. Plus, this is the language that gave us shampoo, jungle, jodhpurs and bungalow - what’s not to love? 6. If you ever travel in the Indian subcontinent, a little Hindi will get you a long way. Spoken mainly in northern India and parts of Pakistan, Hindi uses devnagri script, while Urdu uses Persian notation. Whether this is one language - Hindustani - or two dialects is still fiercely debated. India has 23 official languages, with Hindi/Urdu chief among them. However, the spoken forms of Arabic in, say, Oman and Morocco are so different that a couple of philosophy professors from these countries might be able to discuss the finer points of the ancient texts while still struggling to order lunch. Modern Standard Arabic is a primarily written form, closely related to the Classical Arabic of the Quran. But this is another instance of numbers not telling the full tale: Arabic, like Chinese, is so vastly different in its respective dialects as to be effectively a number of languages, grouped as one for the sake of convenience. ![]() Recent numbers put Arabic at around 362 million native speakers. For some, English is still synonymous with opportunity and a better quality of life. culture means that English will continue to dominate the world stage for the foreseeable future. The relative ease with which English can be picked up (especially compared with Chinese) and the pervasive soft power of U.S. This indicates the remarkable success of English as the lingua franca of business, travel and international relations. If you’re reading this article, you may be one of the 370 million-odd native English speakers, or one of the billion people who speak it as a second language. But it is certainly the primary language of most of South and Central America, Spain, and, ahem, large swathes of the US. As with all the languages on this list, the politics of language and associated identity are highly disputed: ask Catalan or Quechua speakers if Spanish is their local tongue and you will get a very different answer. If you want a language that will open up whole continents to you, Spanish is your best bet. If we were only to look at native speakers, Spanish is in front of English with about 485 million speakers. Seeing as Chinese is a tonal language that uses thousands of logograms, it will certainly keep you busy. If you wish to learn a language that one in six people in the world speak, this is the one for you. Numbers vary widely - Ethnologue puts the number of native speakers at 1.3 billion native speakers, roughly 900 million of whom speak Mandarin - but there’s no doubt it’s the most spoken language in the world. When tallied according to number of native speakers only, these are the most spoken languages in the world. Top 10 Languages By Number Of Native Speakers The numbers below are taken compiled by Ethnologue, which is widely considered the most complete language data source currently in existence.īut then again, who doesn’t love a good list? So we’ve compiled two versions for you. We haven’t even yet acknowledged the unreliability of data sources, collected at different times by different institutions. “Hindi” is also used as a catchall term to cover numerous dialects and sub-dialects. More troubling is the fact that what we refer to simply as “Chinese” is actually a whole family of languages conveniently lumped into a single category. What constitutes a language or a dialect is hotly contested stuff. One small caveat: Assigning hard data, in the form of “X million native speakers,” to any of these languages is practically impossible. We can say with some confidence that Mandarin, English, Spanish and Arabic will make an appearance (and roughly in what order), but there are some surprises, too! Would you have guessed that Bengali is in the top 10 most spoken languages? ![]() Determining what are the most spoken languages in the world is a more difficult task than you might imagine. ![]()
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