Worldwide, which language is most commonly spoken by native speakers today?

However, all such rankings should be used with caution, because it is not possible to devise a coherent set of linguistic criteria for distinguishing languages in a dialect continuum.[1] For example, a language is often defined as a set of varieties that are mutually intelligible, but independent national standard languages may be considered to be separate languages even though they are largely mutually intelligible, as in the case of Danish and Norwegian.[2] Conversely, many commonly accepted languages, including German, Italian and even English, encompass varieties that are not mutually intelligible.[1][better source needed] While Arabic is sometimes considered a single language centred on Modern Standard Arabic, other authors describe its mutually unintelligible varieties as separate languages.[3] Similarly, Chinese is sometimes viewed as a single language because of a shared culture and common literary language.[4] It is also common to describe various Chinese dialect groups, such as Mandarin, Wu and Yue, as languages, even though each of these groups contains many mutually unintelligible varieties.[5]

There are also difficulties in obtaining reliable counts of speakers, which vary over time because of population change and language shift. In some areas, there is no reliable census data, the data is not current, or the census may not record languages spoken, or record them ambiguously. Sometimes speaker populations are exaggerated for political reasons, or speakers of minority languages may be under-reported in favour of a national language.[6]

Top languages by population

Ethnologue (2022, 25th edition)

The following languages are listed as having at least 50 million first language speakers in the 2022 edition of Ethnologue, a language reference published by SIL International.[7] Entries identified by Ethnologue as macrolanguages (such as Arabic, Lahnda, Persian, Malay, Pashto, and Chinese, encompassing all their respective varieties) are not included in this section.

Language forms the backbone of communal existence. If you've ever traveled to a place where you don't speak the language, it doesn't take long to discover this. 

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Countless dialects exist across the globe, some closely related to one another and others completely foreign. Find out which language is the most commonly spoken, and which new one might be easiest for you to learn. 

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What is the most spoken language in the world?

Online language tool Babbel reports that English is the most spoken language in the world, with a number of speakers totaling more than 1.4 billion in 2022, according to Statistic & Data. This combines both native and non-native speakers.

If you shift the definition strictly to native speakers, Babbel reports that Chinese – a designation including Mandarin along with a number of other dialects is the winning language, with 1.3 billion native speakers. Mandarin itself is the second most spoken language in the world.

What are the top 10 most spoken languages in the world?  

Statistics & Data reports that the top 10 most spoken languages in the world, in order, are:

• English
• Mandarin Chinese
• Hindi
• Spanish
• French
• Bengali
• Modern Arabic
• Portuguese
• Russian
• Urdu

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What is the easiest language to learn?

This is a subjective question. Different languages operate on varied sets of characters and certain languages are easier or harder to learn based on your mother tongue.

For native English speakers, Babbel reports that Norwegian is one of the easiest languages to learn. Like English, it is a Germanic tongue, therefore sharing some vocabulary. The pronunciation and grammar are also straightforward.

Other languages that might be easier for English speakers include:

• Swedish
• Spanish
• Dutch
• Portuguese
• Indonesian
• Italian
• French
• Swahili

For Spanish speakers, the easiest languages to learn are other romance languages, language software company Rosetta Stone reports. That includes French, Italian, Portuguese as well as a number of others. 

What's the hardest language to learn?

This is again, a subjective question. For English speakers, Babbel reports that Mandarin Chinese is one of the hardest languages to learn, given it does not operate off the Latin alphabet and the tonal pronunciation poses a challenge to many native English speakers. 

Rosetta Stone reports that Mandarin is also one of the most difficult languages for Spanish speakers to learn. 

Berlitz, another online language tool, reports that Hungarian is the most difficult language for English speakers to pick up given its complicated grammar and pronunciation.

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What was the first language spoken?

The first language spoken by humans is a subject of some debate.

The Times of India reports that the world’s oldest language is Sanskrit, widely considered to be one of the most ancient languages in the world, and the origin point for many modern languages.

Sanskrit has been spoken since 5,000 years before Christ, but in its modern iteration is less of a form of communication and more of a language used for worship.

Translation service, The Spanish Group, however reports that recent evidence suggests the language of Tamil might actually be older, dating back to 350 BC and possibly serving as the blueprint for Latin and Greek.

How many languages are there?

There are over 7,000 languages in the world. Ethnologue, an online publication that provides data on the languages of the world, reports that there are 7,151 living languages.

Which language is most commonly spoken by native speakers today?

What is the most common spoken language in the world?

What is the most native spoken language in the world 2022?