The 10 Most Spoken Languages In The World

Fun fact: These 10 languages only originate from 3 different language families.

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I’ve always been fascinated by languages. Not surprisingly, I am a linguist by trade now. I have worked with or tried to learn multiple languages besides my mother tongue German. These include English, Latin, Greek, Russian, French, Japanese, Chinese, Urdu, Sanskrit, Serbo-Croatian, and Lithuanian.

Today, I’ll be focusing on the ten most spoken languages (by native speakers) in the world today. Can you name a few from the top of your head? I was surprised with a few entries, for sure. Let’s see!

(These numbers come from the 2019 edition of Ethnologue and only include native speakers, not the overall number of speakers. 2022 numbers are undoubtedly a little different.)

10. Marathi

India | 83.1 million speakers

Marathi is a language spoken in the Indian state of Maharashtra by over 83 million native speakers.

Like most languages spoken in India, Marathi is an Indo-European language, the largest currently used language family in the world. Therefore, it’s related to European languages like English, French, Spanish, German, and more.

9. Western Punjabi

India, Pakistan | 92 million speakers

As another Indo-European language, Western Punjabi has around 92 million speakers and is predominantly spoken in the Punjab region of Pakistan as well as in India.

8. Japanese

Japan | 128 million speakers

Japanese is the first language on our list that doesn’t belong to the Indo-European language family. Japanese is bundled into its own family, called the Japonic languages. The roots of this language family are still quite unclear to linguists.

7. Russian

Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan | 154 million speakers

As the dominant language of the former Soviet Union, Russian is widely spread in Eastern Europe and parts of Asia. Russia is another Indo-European language, closely related to the two other actively spoken East Slavic languages Belarusian and Ukrainian.

6. Portuguese

Portugal, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, São Tomé and Príncipe, Brazil | 221 million speakers

I have to confess, I didn’t know Portuguese was so high up on this list. Which I should have known as it is the official language of Brazil and 6 other nations. As a member of the Indo-European language family, Portuguese is also a Romance language, closely related to Spanish, Italian, and French.

5. Bengali

Bangladesh, India | 300 million speakers

Bengali is spoken in Bangladesh and India. Another member of the Indo-European language family.

4. Hindi

India | 341 million speakers

The largest language spoken in India is again part of the Indo-European tree and makes up a large portion of the Indo-Aryan family.

3. English

The United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Republic of Ireland | 379 million speakers

Well, not much to be said about English here. The most commonly spoken language in the world, and number 3 by native speakers. English is the second-to-last member of the Indo-European language family on this list. Yes, there is one with more speakers.

2. Spanish

Spain, Andorra, Latin America, Caribbean, Africa, Asia | 480 million speakers

And this one is Spanish. The last member of the Indo-European language family on our list is spoken all over the world, has a long history, and is closely related to other Romance languages like French, Italian, or Portuguese.

1. Mandarin Chinese

China, Taiwan, | 917 million speakers

With almost 1 billion native speakers (as of 2019 in Ethnologue), Mandarin Chinese is the language with the most native speakers in the world by quite a large margin. Almost double that of Spanish.

Mandarin is part of the Sino-Tibetan languages, the 3rd language family on our list after Indo-European and Japonic. The Sino-Tibetan language family is with over 400 languages the second-largest language family in the world behind Indo-European.

Did you get some languages right?

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