What language has the most native speakers?
Quick answer
Mandarin Chinese has the most native speakers in the world, with roughly 940 million people who grew up speaking it. Spanish is second with about 480 million. But if you count everyone who speaks a language, including as a second language, English comes first with around 1.5 billion speakers.
Most native speakers
| Rank | Language | Approx. native speakers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mandarin Chinese | ~940 million |
| 2 | Spanish | ~480 million |
| 3 | English | ~390 million |
| 4 | Hindi | ~345 million |
| 5 | Portuguese | ~250 million |
| 6 | Bengali | ~240 million |
| 7 | Russian | ~145 million |
| 8 | Japanese | ~123 million |
| 9 | Yue (Cantonese) | ~85 million |
| 10 | Vietnamese | ~85 million |
Figures vary between sources such as Ethnologue, depending on how dialects are counted and when estimates were made.
Most total speakers
| Rank | Language | Approx. total speakers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | English | ~1.5 billion |
| 2 | Mandarin Chinese | ~1.1 billion |
| 3 | Hindi | ~610 million |
| 4 | Spanish | ~560 million |
| 5 | French | ~310 million |
English leads because hundreds of millions learn it as a second language for business, science, travel and the internet.
Why Mandarin is so big
Mandarin is the official language of China and Taiwan and one of the official languages of Singapore. China’s population of about 1.4 billion includes speakers of other Chinese languages too, like Cantonese and Wu, which are often called “dialects” but are not mutually understandable with Mandarin.
How many languages are there?
There are about 7,000 languages in the world, but almost half are endangered, many with fewer than 1,000 speakers. Just a couple of dozen languages are spoken by more than half the world’s population.
Learning one of them? “Why” is a great first word; here’s how to say it in Spanish. French is also widely spoken across Africa and in places like Montreal.
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