What is most widely spoken language in the world? (2023)

What's the most widely spoken language in the world?

English is the most widely spoken language worldwide, with 1.5 billion speakers.

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.

English (1,132 million speakers)

With over 1,130 million native speakers, English is the most spoken language in the world.

Currently, these are the 10 most spoken languages in the world in 2022, sorted by number of mother language speakers: Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, English, Hindi, Bengali, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, Yue chinese, Vietnamese.

Dating back to at least 3500 BC, the oldest proof of written Sumerian was found in today's Iraq, on an artifact known as the Kish Tablet. Thus, given this evidence, Sumerian can also be considered the first language in the world.

1. Egyptian – 2690 BC (circa. 4700 years old) The first known language ever was a proto-language on the African continent, and the first known proto-writing system was created in Nigeria. So, it is perhaps no surprise that the oldest language on this list is also from and used in Africa – Egyptian.

Mandarin Chinese is the largest language in the world when counting only first language (native) speakers. This is due to the significant population of China.

English belongs to the Indo-European family of languages and is therefore related to most other languages spoken in Europe and western Asia from Iceland to India. The parent tongue, called Proto-Indo-European, was spoken about 5,000 years ago by nomads believed to have roamed the southeast European plains.

What is the mother of all languages?

Covers A Larger Precinct. Though not for all the languages, Sanskrit is surely the mother of many languages, especially languages spoken in Northern India. Even many words from Dravidian languages are derived from Sanskrit.

The Proto-Human language (also Proto-Sapiens, Proto-World) is the hypothetical direct genetic predecessor of all the world's spoken languages.

As mentioned before, Mandarin is unanimously considered the most difficult language to master in the world! Spoken by over a billion people in the world, the language can be extremely difficult for people whose native languages use the Latin writing system.

The world's youngest language, coming in at only 100 years old (officially), is the South African language of Afrikaans. Surprised? Afrikaans, the natively spoken language of 7 million South Africans, was born from the white Dutch, French, and German colonizers in South Africa in the 17th and 18th centuries.

For the same reasons Dutch is the closest language to English, German is also a close language, and another one that many English speakers may find easier to learn. Dutch is commonly mentioned as the language nestled between English and German.

The English language is widely regarded as one of the most difficult to master. Because of its unpredictable spelling and challenging to learn grammar, it is challenging for both learners and native speakers.

It's unlikely that we'll see a world that speaks one language any time soon. Protecting each individual countries' cultures is a huge barrier, but an important one to ensure our world is as beautifully diverse as it's always been.

Bengali is spoken by more than 272 million people worldwide as a first and second language. Portuguese has also overtaken Russian, with more than 263 million speakers in 2022. Spanish, which is spoken by more than 500 million people worldwide, also ranks high. In fifth place is French, with 282 million speakers.

Mandarin. Mandarin is likely to be the most spoken language in 2050 because of its vast number of speakers. The economic influence of China will also prove vital for the continued use and spread of Chinese languages around the world.

Although Mandarin is predicted to dominate by 2050, other Chinese languages are also predicted to thrive over the next three decades.

Who knows the most languages in 2022?

As mentioned before, Mandarin is unanimously considered the most difficult language to master in the world! Spoken by over a billion people in the world, the language can be extremely difficult for people whose native languages use the Latin writing system.

You might not realize how widely spoken Arabic already is, with about 300 million native speakers. It's also been deemed the fastest growing language within the U.S. and even the fastest growing language on the internet. Why should Arabic's growth matter to you?

Python. Python can be regarded as the future of programming languages. As per the latest statistics, Python is the main coding language for around 80% of developers. The presence of extensive libraries in Python facilitates artificial intelligence, data science, and machine learning processes.

Hindi, Bengali, Urdu and Indonesian will dominate much of the business world by 2050, followed by Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic and Russian. If you want to get the most money out of your language course, studying one of the languages listed above is probably a safe bet.

The number of Chinese speakers online is estimated at 888.4 million, which has risen an astounding 2600% over the same time period. The Chinese language is catching up quickly and is set to overtake English in the near future. The country also has a lot of room to grow as the internet penetration rate is only 60%.

Korean includes many words of Chinese origin, and borrows words from English and other languages as well. Still, it's a stretch to say that Korean has the most words of any language in the world because one of its dictionaries has over a million headwords.