The top languages spoken in the world reflect economic trends, populated countries, and even colonial history.
In the image below, Visual Capitalist's Marcus Lu visualizes the most spoken languages around the world as of 2023. These figures come from Ethnologue, which publishes a list of the largest languages every year.
The 12 Most Spoken Languages on Earth
English was born in the United Kingdom but today belongs to the modern world as the main international language of business and politics.
That’s why it’s not very surprising to find English as the world’s most spoken language, with 1.5 billion speakers as of 2023.
In second place is Mandarin, the most spoken Chinese language dialect with 1.1 billion speakers. Originating in North China, it has become the most spoken language in China and Taiwan, as well as having millions of speakers spread across Southeast Asia and the world.
India is also represented in this ranking, but despite being the world’s most populated country, its speakers are spread out over multiple different languages. Hindi is the main language spoken in North India and an official language of the government, but other languages like Bengali are widely spoken in other regions, in this case in East India (and neighboring Bangladesh).
It’s also notable how languages from former colonial powers - like English, Spanish, French, and Portuguese - all have hundreds of millions of speakers, despite their mother countries accounting for a fraction of that total.
