Top 10 most spoken languages in the world

1. English (1,132 million speakers) – Native speakers: 379 million – Non-native speakers: 753 million

2. Mandarin (1,117 million speakers) – Native speakers: 918 million – Non-native speakers: 199 million Adding native and non-native speakers, Mandarin is the second most widely spoken language in the world. However, it's the most spoken language in the world if you count only first language (native) speakers due to China's significant population.

3. Hindi (615 million speakers) – Native speakers: 341 million – Non-native speakers: 274 million Hindi is, along with English, one of the 22 official languages of India, the second most inhabited country in the world.

4. Spanish (534 million speakers) – Native speakers: 460 million – Non-native speakers: 74 million Spanish is the second of the most widely spoken languages globally in terms of the number of native speakers. In addition, it is the most spoken of the Romance languages, and is the third most used on the internet.

5. French (280 million speakers) – Native speakers: 77 million – Non-native speakers: 203 million Colonialism allowed French to spread throughout the world. Today it is the official language of 29 countries on different continents.

6. Arabic (274 million speakers) – Native speakers: 245 million – Non-native speakers: 29 million Arabic is the official language of 26 countries. Due to this territorial coverage, it is actually a set of dialects. It is also the liturgical language of Islam.

7. Bengali (265 million speakers) – Native speakers: 228 million – Non-native speakers: 37 million Bengali is the official language of Bangladesh. In addition, people speak it in some areas of India and Burma.

8. Russian (258 million speakers) – Native speakers: 154 million – Non-native speakers: 104 million Less surprising is the inclusion of Russian among the most widely spoken languages globally if we think about Russian history and territories.

9. Portuguese (234 million speakers) – Native speakers: 221 million – Non-native speakers: 13 million Portuguese is another of the languages that expanded in the European colonial period. 

10. Indonesian (198 million speakers) – Native speakers: 43 million – Non-native speakers: 155 million Bahasa Indonesian is the official language of Indonesia, the fourth most populous country in the world. Peculiarly, it’s not the native language of most of its speakers.

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