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 … See more

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, Spanish … See more

India has 23 official languages, with Hindi/Urdu chief among them. Whether this is one language — Hindustani — or two dialects is still fiercely debated. Spoken mainly in northern India and parts of Pakistan, Hindi uses dev… See more

Admit it: you didn’t expect Bengali to be on the list of most spoken languages. The Partition of Bengal by the British in 1947 divided (mainly Hindu) West Bengal, now part of India, from its (mainl… See more

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 boasts two d… See more

If you’re reading this article, you may be one of the 370 million-odd native English speakers, or one of the 97… See more

Recent numbers put Arabic at around 315 million native speakers. But this is another instance of numbers not tel… See more

This is another language whose reach owes much to its colonial past. Starting in the 15th century, avid Portuguese traders and conquerors brought their language to Africa, Asia and the Americas. The spread of Portuguese may have ini… See more

With roughly 154 million native speakers, Russian is the eighth most spoken language in the world. Famed for its inscrutable grammar and quite lovely Cyrillic script, it remains on… See more