We bring you a fascinating list of languages that are widely spoken around the world. Find out more about it in this story.
Around 7.5 billion people currently inhabit the world. They come from different places, have indigenous cultures and speak native languages. There are approximately 6900 different languages spoken around the world. Many languages and dialects are extinct, and many have been considered antique. There are close to 200 languages spoken across Europe, and 2000 different languages are spoken in Asia. Interestingly, Papua New Guinea boasts of diverse people who speak more than 800 languages within a population of mere 3.9 million people.
We take a look at the top five languages based on the number of their speakers.
Mandarin: With a whopping 1.120 Billion native speakers worldwide, this Chinese languagetop our chart with its presence in China, Singapore, Taiwan and Malaysia. Mandarin is part of the Siniticfamily with slight variants in the form of dialects as Wu, Cantonese, Gan, Hakka, Min and Xiang. Therefore this Asian language is the most spoken in the world.
Spanish:Due to Spain's conquest of the new world, which forms the continent of South America today, Spaniards could culturally dominate in this area with their customs and their native language Spanish. Most Latin American countries such as Bolivia, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Columbia, Argentina, Cuba, and Brazil have Spanish as their official language. The total number of Spanish speaking people in the world is close to 460 million, with its penetration in North America, Europe and some parts of Africa.
English: If you are reading this article, you are one of the 380 million people in the world who speak English and probably use it as your mother tongue. Due to the European colonialism in North America, Asia and parts of Africa, the People of England took their native language around the world. Today, English is spoken by one billion people as their second or third language and is a significant language of business and communication in the world.
Hindi: Our Desilanguage is the fourth most spoken language, with 340 million native speakers in India, Pakistan and Nepal speak Hindustani (Hindi/Urdu). Even though India recognizes 23 official languages, Hindi speaking belt is generally northern India. Whereas Hindi is written in Devanagari script, Urdu is written in Persian script.
Arabic: The language has around 319 million native speakers spread over Middle Eastern Asia and Africa. Arabic has a lot of sublanguages and dialects in different areas, but it is generally clubbed as the Arabic language for the sake of convenience.
So, how many of these languages do you know?
