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[Vince Keegan]

 Although there are over 6,000 languages in existence today, the vast majority of the world speaks less than 150. Of those 150, the usual suspects are all there, however there are a few that may surprise you; English drops to third place and Portuguese overtakes Bengali. Enough teasing, let’s get started.

01. Chinese (Mandarin) – 935 Million Native Speakers



 Of the more than 6.6 billion people in the world, 14.1% of them speak Mandarin Chinese. China has many dialects, but Mandarin Chinese is the most common and widely accepted of them all. It is the native language of roughly 935 million Chinese.

[Vince Keegan]

02. Spanish – 387 Million Native Speakers



 Saying “Hola” at spot number two is Spanish with 387 million speakers. This accounts for about 5.85% of the world getting the big bien venido upon entering this world. Also a common second language, for Americans and others, Spanish is quickly gaining ground as a world language partly due to it being widely thought of as the easiest language to learn.[livingbilingual.com/2013/06/11/learning-a-language-the-easiest-language-to-learn] While it has quite a ways to go before it overtakes Chinese, it’s already overtaken number #3… English.

[Vince Keegan]

03. English – 365 Million Native Speakers



 If you’re reading this, you speak English to some degree (or you are really confused.) While behind Spanish, English is still the lingua franca of the world. It dominates business, trade, and America’s currency, the dollar, is still used on a global scale. Hollywood helps spread our lovely language throughout the world and helps it maintain it as a status language

[Vince Keegan]

04. Hindi – 295 Million Native Speakers



 Hindi is the big-hitter in India. India has over 122 languages with 22 of them recognized by the constitution of India as official languages. Of them, Hindi has emerged as the big dog; the one everyone wants to play with. It is essentially a lingua franca in parts of, if not all of, India. Most Indians can speak or understand it to some degree. India has a lot of people, therefore a lot of people speak Hindi. Logical.

[Vince Keegan]

05. Arabic – 280 Million Native Speakers



 Obviously, as astute as you all are, you know this statistic is a bit skewed. Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) is the common language used for news broadcasts and official stuff, however most Arabic-speaking folk speak a dialect of Arabic; Egyptian Arabic, Moroccan Arabic, Algerian Arabic, etc. If these were fragmented off, none of them would easily make the top 10, however, luckily for Arabic, they are all lumped together for official purposes. You got lucky this time, Arabic. Arabic is also one of the hardest languages to learn for English speakers.

[Vince Keegan]

06. Portuguese – 204 Million Native Speakers



From Brazil to Portugal, the Portuguese know how to party. They also know how to multiply. From a relatively smaller number of countries, this rabbit-like mammals get it done when it comes to producing little Portuguese speakers.

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