The 20 Most Spoken Languages in the World

Every year, Ethnologue mines the data on more than 7000 languages to see which ones are most popular across the globe. Read on to find out if your native language topped the 2023 list (and learn a fun fact about each language in the top 20).

What is the most spoken language in the world?

With an estimated 1.5 billion speakers worldwide, English is technically the most spoken language in the world. But it’s not the language with the most native speakers: That distinction goes to Mandarin Chinese, which boasts around 940 million native speakers. English’s 380 million native speakers only earns it third place in those rankings. Spanish is in second place with roughly 485 million native speakers.

Here are the top 20 most spoken languages, including native and non-native speakers.

1. English // 1.5 billion

The most common word in the most common language is thought to be the. Not only is it short and easy to use, but it also doesn’t have one meaning (or even a few), which makes it especially versatile.

2. Mandarin Chinese // 1.1 billion

Mandarin Chinese in the language itself is known as putonghua, meaning “common speech.” Mandarin comes from the Portuguese word mandarim, which Portuguese explorers used to describe Chinese officials during the 16th century.

3. Hindi // 609.5 million

On September 14, 1949, India’s Constituent Assembly voted to adopt Hindi as India’s official language. (English is the other official language.) Hindi Diwas, or Hindi Day, is celebrated each year on September 14 to commemorate the decision.

4. Spanish // 559.1 million

There’s an organization dedicated to preserving the Spanish language: the Real Academia Española, or Royal Spanish Academy, established in 1713. Its motto is “Limpia, fija y da esplendor,” or “It cleans, it fixes, and it gives splendor.”

5. French // 309.8 Million

French has quite a few sets of homophones, which makes context clues especially important. Take, for example, cent (“one hundred”), sang (“blood”), sens (the first-person singular conjugation of the verb “to feel”), and sans (“without”)—they’re all pronounced the same.

Sans sang, je me sens cent pour cent mort means “Without blood, I feel one hundred percent dead.”

6. Standard Arabic // 274 million

Out of the six official languages of the United Nations, Arabic is the only one written from right to left. (The other five are Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish.)

7. Bengali // 272.8 million

In basic English sentences, the object comes after the verb; e.g. I love cats. In Bengali, Bangladesh’s official language, the object falls between the subject and the verb—so it would be I cats love.

8. Portuguese // 263.6 million

Roughly 5 percent of Portuguese speakers actually live in Portugal. Many live in Brazil, but that’s not the only other place that counts Portuguese as an official language. Mozambique, Angola, Equatorial Guinea, and five more countries and territories do, too.

9. Russian // 255 million

Since missions to the International Space Station usually launch from Russian territory in Kazakhstan, U.S. astronauts headed to the ISS have to learn Russian. “I’ve been asked many times what’s the hardest thing about space flight and I say it’s learning the language,” astronaut Peggy Whitson said in a 2020 interview.

10. Urdu // 231.7 million

Urdu, most widely spoken in Pakistan and India, is so similar to Hindi that they’re sometimes considered two versions of a single language. They’re written in different scripts, though: Devanāgarī for Hindi, and Nastaʼlīq for Urdu.

11. Indonesian // 199.1 million

Because the Netherlands established a presence in Indonesia in the early 17th century and later colonized the territory, Indonesian has many Dutch loanwords. Tas, for example, means “bag” in both languages; and the Indonesian word kantor, meaning “office,” comes from the Dutch word kantoor (which also means “office”).

12. Standard German // 133.2 million

German doesn’t distinguish between proper and common nouns; all nouns are capitalized. The language also has a reputation for impressively long words and innovative insults.

13. Japanese // 123.4 million

Though Japanese has loanwords from other languages (and some characters borrowed from Chinese), it’s a language isolate—meaning it’s not related to any known language, and we don’t really know where it came from.

14. Nigerian Pidgin // 120.7 million

Nigeria is home to more than 500 languages, and Nigerian Pidgin—whose base language is English—helps speakers of those many languages find common ground. Want to learn it? Hello is always a good place to start: It’s How far?.

15. Egyptian Spoken Arabic // 102.4 million

There’s crossover between the vocabulary of Modern Standard Arabic and Egyptian Spoken Arabic, but the latter also has plenty of loanwords from other languages. Yisantar, for example, comes from the English verb center.

16. Marathi // 99.2 million

Marathi has been the official language of the Indian state Maharashtra since 1966, and it has close ties to Hindi. Marathi, like Hindi, is usually written in the Devanāgarī script.

17. Telugu // 96 million

Of approximately 80 varieties in the Dravidian language family—estimated to be around 4500 years old—Telugu is the largest.

18. Turkish // 90 million

Turkish delight isn’t the only reference to Turkey that C.S. Lewis included in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The Turkish word aslan—the name of the lion in the novel—actually means “lion.”

19. Tamil // 86.6 million

Though Telugu is the most spoken Dravidian language, Tamil holds the distinction of being the oldest in the family.

20. Yue Chinese // 86.6 million

Cantonese is sometimes used to refer to the whole collection of Chinese dialects known as Yue Chinese (or any single dialect in that category). But the term can also refer to one specific Yue dialect common in Hong Kong and Guangzhou.

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