When tallied according to number of native speakers only, these are the most spoken languages in the world. Meer weergeven

Numbers vary widely — Ethnologue puts the number of native speakers at 1.3 billion native speakers, roughly 1.1 billion of whom speak Mandarin — but there’s no doubt it’s the most spoken language in the world. If you wish t… Meer weergeven

If you’re reading this article, you may be one of the 370 million-odd native English speakers, or one of … Meer weergeven

Recent numbers put Arabic at around 315 million native speakers. But this is another instance of numbers not telling the full tale: Arabic, like Chinese… Meer weergeven

Admit it: you didn’t expect Bengali to be on the list of most spoken languages. The Partition of Bengal b… Meer weergeven

Almost all of the 126 million native Japanese speakers live in Japan — certainly the most highly geographically concentrated of all the languages on this list. Japanese boast… Meer weergeven

If we were only to look at native speakers, Spanish has its nose in front of English with about 471 million speakers. If you want a language that will open up whole continents to you, S… Meer weergeven

India has 23 official languages, with Hindi/Urdu chief among them. Whether this is one languag… Meer weergeven

This is another language whose reach owes much to its colonial past. Starting in the 15th century, avi… Meer weergeven

With roughly 154 million native speakers, Russian is the eighth most spoken language in the world. Famed for its inscrutable gramma… Meer weergeven