Top 10 Most Spoken World Languages

Posted on by Forest in General, Opinion

Top 10 Most Spoken World Languages

Can you list the 10 of the World’s most spoken languages and can you speak more than one of them? Languages are fascinating and I am always upset that I didn’t learn a bunch at a young age.

The command of more than one language certainly improves your understanding of the world and allows the brain to evolve in more than one way. My limited french and Arabic has improved my view of the world and even given me some new concepts as languages often have words that mean a specific thing.

Did you know? 83 of the most widely spoken languages are spoken by 80 percent of the world population, that means that the 3,500 least-used languages account for 0.2 percent of the world’s people!

Anyway what are the 10 most spoken languages? Lets take a look.

10. German

Related to Dutch and English, German is said to be the most spoken language in the European Union. It’s widely spoken obviously in Germany and Austria and Switzerland and has been around since the 6th century AD. Around 90 million people speak German.

9. Japanese

Dating back to the 8th Century AD in it’s earliest form and part of the Japonic languages, it’s widely spoken due to Japans influence in the business world and population size. Approximately 122 million speak Japanese.

8. Russian

One of the slavic languages dating back to the 10th Century AD. 144 million speak Russian.

7. Portuguese

Portuguese is one of the romance languages which also includes Spanish, French and Italian that was spoken by the Kingdom of Galicia. Author Miguel de Cervantes called it “The sweet language”. 178 million people speak Portuguese.

6. Bengali 

Bengali dates back to around 1000-1200 AD. In 1952 an attempt to abolish the language was made but it flipped the other way and Bengali language movement day is now celebrated on 21st February every year. 181 million speak Bengali.

5. Hindi

Hindi is mostly spoken in India, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia (did’t know that!) and you can find the roots of the Hindi language in the 17th century AD. The standardization of Hindi grammar only happened in 1954 and 182 million people speak Hindi.

4. Arabic

Spoken mainly throughout the Middle East and also the language of the Holy Qur’an. You can find the earliest Arabic language in 4th century AD and it’s classified a semitic language. 221 million people speak Arabic world wide but it has pretty large regional variations.

3. English

A huge colonial influence could be seen as the root to this language being so widespread. Of course each country has adapted it greatly and in the US you can find a ton of common American slang. In fact in UK the regional variations are so huge that people often can’t understand each other (you just try speaking to someone with a thick Newcastle accent if you are not from there!). 328 million people speak the English language.

2. Spanish

Much like the British the Spanish colonised much of the world leading to many Spanish speaking countries including Spain, Mexico, Colombia and Peru to name a few. It dates back to the 9th century AD and there are various Spanish dialects. There are a lot of celebrities who speak spanish much due to it being the 2nd language in USA. 329 million people speak the Spanish language.

1. Chinese

With more than 30% of the world’s population in China, Chinese is by default the most spoken language. Originally spoken by the Han Chinese and thought to have started with the Zhou Dynasty. The Mandarin chinese dialect is the most widely spoken dialect and 1.21 billion people speak Chinese.

Top 10 Most Spoken World Languages

I hope to keep traveling and learning parts of new languages but maybe one day i’ll actually sit down and learn a full 2nd language. I am admirable of people who speak more than one and people who speak more than 4 just blow my mind!

I would love to know what languages you speak and if you have any insights and tips for learning.

How to Speak Klingon

Tags: 10 biggest languages, languages, world languages