The 25 Most Spoken Languages in the World and Map of where they are spoken.

[Xavier]

From Far and Wide: There are actually 25 languages mentioned in the Article, but I just post the Top 5 here.

"What languages are the most commonly spoken around the world? Well, that can be a tricky question.

While we have a pretty good idea of how many people speak the major languages of the world, determining where they're most spoken can be complicated. Countries often have official languages that are given legal status, but there are also additional designations — including regional languages, minority languages, national languages and widely spoken language — that indicate a language is spoken by a sizable share of a country's population.

Attempting to piece these all together with easy-to-view world maps, we've broken down the most commonly spoken languages based on their total number of speakers, while sharing where you will hear them most. Appropriately enough, we start with the language this very piece is written in, which also happens to be the most commonly used in the world...

1. English — 1.5 Billion Speakers




Official language in: Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, Bahamas, Barbados, Botswana, Brunei, Burundi, Cameroon, Canada, Dominica, Eswatini, Fiji, Gambia, Ghana, Grenada, Guyana, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Jamaica, Kenya, Kiribati, Lesotho, Liberia, Malawi, Malta, Marshall Islands, Mauritius, Namibia, Nauru, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Rwanda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Solomon Islands, Somaliland, South Africa, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tuvalu, Uganda, UK, United States, Vanuatu, Zambia

Regional language in: Honduras in the Bay Islands, Micronesia except for Kosrae, Netherlands in Saint Maarten, Saint Eustatius and Saba islands

Widely spoken in: Cyprus, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Israel, Palestine, Switzerland

2. Mandarin Chinese — 1.3 Billion Speakers




Official language in: China, Singapore, Taiwan

Widely spoken in: Malaysia

Of all the 297 living languages spoken in China, Mandarin Chinese is by far the most common, with 1.3 billion speakers. (As a point of comparison, the second-most-prevalent language, Wu — see No. 21 on this list — is spoken by 80 million people.)

There is much debate about Mandarin eventually surpassing English to become the language of international business, but as most people outside of Asia do not have a basic understanding of Mandarin, experts do not predict this will happen.

Fun fact: Chinese can either be written in traditional characters or with simplified characters created via a government initiative in the 1950s that was designed to make the language easier to learn.

[Xavier]

3. Spanish — 661 Million Speakers



Official language in: Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, Spain, Uruguay, Venezuela

Minority language in: Andorra

Regional language in: Belize

Widely spoken in: Philippines, United States

The Spanish language extended its reach quickly around the world as conquests were made to discover new lands. Commonly found in South America, Central America and the Caribbean, it is today spoken by millions of people in many different countries.

The majority of Spanish speakers in the world are in Mexico. Across the border in the United States, where English is the official language, 41 million people speak Spanish as their first language. Nearly 12 million Americans are bilingual, as well, and studies predict that the U.S. will topple Mexico as the largest Spanish-speaking county by 2050.

4. Hindustani (Hindi/Urdu) — 544 Million Speakers




Official language in: Fiji and India (Hindi); Pakistan (Urdu)

Hindustani refers to both the Hindi and Urdu languages, which are direct descendants of Sanskrit.

Hindi is spoken by so many people in large part because it's an official language in India, the second-most-populous country on Earth. Urdu, an official language in the neighboring country of Pakistan, is more often spoken in Muslim communities.

5. Arabic — 422 Million Speakers




Official language in: Algeria, Bahrain, Chad, Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Somaliland, Sudan, Syria, United Arab Emirates, Yemen

Regional language in: Israel

National language in: Cyprus (Cypriot Arabic), Niger, South Sudan, Tunisia

Widely spoken in: Eritrea, Indonesia, Philippines

A Semitic language from the Arabian Peninsula, Arabic began as a language used by nomadic tribes to converse with one another. Today, it is particularly dominant in the Middle East and nearby Asian and African countries.

Although Hebrew, a similar language, began with tribes in the same area, it is not considered Arabic as it was influenced by Slavic, Roman and German dialects. It is spoken in Israel and by Jewish communities globally, whereas Arabic is mostly used in Muslim communities. ... [please read the link for more: see here for Malay with 281 Million Speakers in 6th place and subsequent languages]"

[drummerboy]

The link doesn't work.  Where is French on the list?  From what I've read this language is on track to beat out Mandarin from its place due to its widespread use in Africa, whose population continues to expand

[Fleur-de-Lys]

The link doesn't work.  Where is French on the list?  From what I've read this language is on track to beat out Mandarin from its place due to its widespread use in Africa, whose population continues to expand

It depends on whether you are looking at the number of native speakers or also including second language speakers in your calculation. At best, French is only in 5th place. It has nowhere near the number of speakers that Mandarin does.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_number_of_speakers

[Heinrich]

English should be light blue in Germany and maybe Austria.

[drummerboy]

The link doesn't work.  Where is French on the list?  From what I've read this language is on track to beat out Mandarin from its place due to its widespread use in Africa, whose population continues to expand

It depends on whether you are looking at the number of native speakers or also including second language speakers in your calculation. At best, French is only in 5th place. It has nowhere near the number of speakers that Mandarin does.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_number_of_speakers

But many Africans might speak up to four languages, French, English, Swahili, and whatever their local dialect happens to be.

Also, I am noticing more and more French on packaging next to English, whereas years ago it was English-Spanish.  Perhaps due to increased trade with Canada and Canadian exports.  French is also becoming more common in China, as this nation is needing an external source for their domestic needs (Africa), as their economy is geared towards exports.

[Fleur-de-Lys]

But many Africans might speak up to four languages, French, English, Swahili, and whatever their local dialect happens to be.

Also, I am noticing more and more French on packaging next to English, whereas years ago it was English-Spanish.  Perhaps due to increased trade with Canada and Canadian exports.  French is also becoming more common in China, as this nation is needing an external source for their domestic needs (Africa), as their economy is geared towards exports.

The article that I linked to includes second-language speakers. In linguistic terms "second language" does not mean the second in a series; it means any language that is not a maternal language. So for those who speak four languages, as many as three of those may be classified as second languages. The fact remains that Chinese currently has more than four times the number of speakers that French has. For this to change would require major demographic shifts.

Was this perhaps the article you had in mind? If so, note that it contains some significant caveats.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/05/31/ozy-french-language/9781569/

Is French the language of the future?
Laura Secorun PaletOzy.com
Published 8:49am ET May 31, 2014

The French are a proud bunch, especially when it comes to their mother tongue. So it must have been hard for them to take a backseat and watch English become the lingua franca of the 21st century.

But revenge could be on the horizon: The language beloved by Parisian poets, Russian aristocrats and pretentious grad students is set to reclaim its title when it becomes the world's most commonly spoken language by the year 2050, according to a study by Natixis, an investment bank.

The language beloved by Parisian poets, Russian aristocrats and international diplomats is set to reclaim its title.

French is currently ranked sixth among world languages, after Mandarin Chinese, English, Spanish, Hindi and Arabic. But it is gaining speakers quickly and, the study reports, will be spoken by 750 million in 2050, up from 220 million today.

C'est possible? English enjoys an indisputable global popularity, and Mandarin has long been touted as the language of the future, given the size of China's population and its growing economic power, but French has a demographic ace up its sleeve: French-speaking populations are growing faster than English- and Mandarin-speaking ones.

Besides France and its best-known former colonies, Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria, the language of Molière and Manet is spoken in 28 other states — which happen to be some of world's fastest-growing nations. In Africa, French is the official schooling language of countries with increasingly high fertility rates like Mali in the north, and Guinea, Chad and Democratic Republic of Congo in the sub-Saharan region.

A demographic boom in these African states could bump the world's percentage of French speakers from 3 percent today to 8 percent by 2050.

French-speaking populations are growing faster than English- and Mandarin-speaking ones.

Meanwhile, China and many English-speaking countries are likely to experience a demographic slowdown, which could lead to an expected decline in the number of English speakers — from 8 percent to 3 percent of the world's population. For Mandarin, a drop from 10 percent to 8 percent is anticipated.

While this sounds like cause for celebration for Francophiles who might cringe at the notion of studying Mandarin, it's not time to pop open the Dom Perignon quite yet. Some skeptics think the predictions are overstated.

The study labels all the citizens of the states where French is the official language as "French speakers," which is not strictly true. Countries like Belgium, for example, have more than one official language and, in some African nations, the tongue of the former colonial power is losing ground. Even in Algeria, only a third of the population can write in French.

"The number of people who speak French continues to increase, and the projections are indeed impressive, but they do not take into account the coexistence of languages, which is the reality in many countries," says Alexandre Wolff from the Observatory of the French Language.

So while French is on the rise, it may be a while before it can challenge the hegemony of English or the growing appeal of Mandarin Chinese. Which makes it a good time to dust off your old French phrasebook — but don't bid adieu to those Mandarin lessons just yet.

[Gardener]