Native Speakers: 1.3 Billion

There’s no doubt Mandarin Chinese stands first among the most spoken languages in the world. The dialects of this language are rich and diverse. Chinese is a tonal language that uses thousands of logograms.

This is a language that one in six people in the world speaks. The speakers range from North-eastern to Beijing, Southwestern to Yin-Lan including several others like China (languages of China), Taiwan (languages of Taiwan), Malaysia, and New York. The majority of the translation companies convert Chinese to English translation and vice versa for the language translation services.

A few facts about the Mandarin language:

• In Chinese, Mandarin is called pǔtōnghuà, literally “common speech”.

• The writing system is character-based and you can learn to write Chinese characters using Scripts!

Native Speaker: 471 Million

After Mandarin, Spanish stands the second among the most native languages which includes around 21 countries speaking this language in the western and eastern hemispheres and also runs close with English. There are many dialects of Spanish spoken across Europe, South America, Central America, and the Caribbean, but the language originated in the Castile region of Spain.

If only to look at native speakers, Spanish has its nose in front of English with about 471 million speakers. If you want a language that will open up whole continents to you, Spanish is your best bet. As with all the languages on this list, the politics of language and associated identity are highly disputed: ask Catalan or Quechua speakers if Spanish is their local tongue and you will get a very different answer.

A few facts about the Spanish language:

• One of the names for Spanish in Spanish is Castellano and the name originates with the language’s origins in the Castile region.
• In the US, Spanish is the second most spoken language.

Native Speakers: 370 Million

English is listed in third place among the most spoken languages in the world. The reason behind this is that it is an international language spoken worldwide. Many of the IT sectors and the majority of the professional translation services use English as a target or source language. To know more about the English language, you can check out the languages of the UK and the languages of the USA.

If you’re reading this article, you may be one of the 370 million-odd native English speakers or one of the 978 million people who speak it as a second language. This indicates the remarkable success of English as the lingua franca of business, travel, and international relations. The relative ease with which English can be picked up (especially compared with Chinese) and the pervasive soft power of US culture means that English will continue to dominate the world stage for the foreseeable future. For some, English is still synonymous with opportunity and a better quality of life. English is the modern lingua franca of the world--the presence and actions of the British Empire playing a large role in this. It’s the world’s third most spoken language in terms of native speakers.

A few facts about the English language:

• English has many borrowed words from French, German, and other languages.
• The name for the English language, “English” has Germanic origins.

Native Speakers: 342 Million

Hindi is a language spoken in India and it is the official language of the Indian government. It’s mutually intelligible with Urdu. India has 23 official languages, with Hindi/Urdu chief among them. Whether this is one language — Hindustani — or two dialects is still fiercely debated. Spoken mainly in northern India and parts of Pakistan, Hindi uses Devanagari script, while Urdu uses Persian notation.

Hindi grabs the fourth spot in the list of top 10 most spoken languages in the world. There are higher estimates of Hindi speakers which acts as the base for all the North Indian languages in India. Not all variations of Hindi are mutually lucid considering the same language. Despite the Hindi speakers, translation services including English to Hindi and Hindi to English translation is not much requested because most probably Hindi-Urdu speakers can also speak the English language.

A few facts about the Hindi language:

• Hindi is written in Devanagari--a writing system you can learn with Scripts.
• The English word “shampoo” is borrowed from Hindi along with punch, pajamas, guru, jungle, and khaki.

Native Speakers: 315 Million

Arabic ranks fifth in the world, which comprises 4 main dialects. Generally, it is widespread in the Western, Central Egypt, Southern parts of the Gulf, Yemen, and Northern parts of Iraq and Lebanon. Also, Arabic is the official language of about 26 countries and translation services from Arabic to English and English to Arabic are definitely a major service.

Recent numbers put Arabic at around 315 million native speakers. But this is another instance of numbers not telling the full tale: Arabic, like Chinese, is so vastly different in its respective dialects as to be effectively a number of languages, grouped as one for the sake of convenience. Modern Standard Arabic is a primarily written form, closely related to the Classical Arabic of the Quran. However, the spoken forms of Arabic in, say, Oman and Morocco are so different that a couple of philosophy professors from these countries might be able to discuss the finer points of the ancient texts while still struggling to order lunch.

A few facts about the Arabic language:

• It is also one of the six official languages of the United Nations (UN)
• Arabic constructs words from basic roots

Native Speakers: 232 Million

Portuguese is the sixth most spoken language especially in the east and western hemispheres like Brazil, Angola, Portugal, and other countries around the region with 232 million native speakers. Also, the Portuguese translation has a huge rise in the western hemispheres and is used regularly as the most translated language especially on store products.

This is another language whose reach owes much to its colonial past. Starting in the 15th century, avid Portuguese traders and conquerors brought their language to Africa, Asia, and the Americas. The spread of Portuguese may have initially been tied to European colonization, but the colonized countries developed their own vibrant cultures that transformed the language forever. Portuguese is a language related to Spanish and it is spoken in Portugal and Brazil. The name of the language comes from a word meaning “port”.

A few facts about the Portuguese language:

• Brazil has the largest number of Portuguese speakers in the world.
• Portuguese has official status as a language in nine different countries.

Native Speakers: 229 Million

Bengali stands in seventh place and is surprisingly one of the most spoken languages in the world. Also, Bengali is used only in some parts of the world with around 200 million speakers but the importance of the language is rarely known as they consider it an exception in English Bengali translation services.

The Partition of Bengal by the British in 1947 divided (mainly Hindu) West Bengal, now part of India, from its (mainly Muslim) counterpart East Bengal, now Bangladesh. It is the language of Kolkata, the Andaman Islands, fabulous sweets, and 130-odd million Bangladeshis — many of whom are extremely vulnerable to climate change. By the next century, the population is projected to double while 15 percent of the land area is expected to disappear below rising seas. The official language of Bangladesh, Bengali is the official language of Bangladesh and one of the most spoken languages of India.

A few facts about the Bengali language:

• Bengali is written in a script related to Tibetan.

Native Speakers: 154 Million

Russian comes in the eighth notch with roughly 154 million native speakers and most of the Russian places use Mandarin even in the smallest area competing with it. It is one of the leading languages of the United Nations. Russian to English translation services are estimated to be the most important translation services in the field of internet marketing.

Famed for its inscrutable grammar and quite a lovely Cyrillic script, it remains one of the six languages spoken in the United Nations and produced the literary likes of Dostoyevsky, Nabokov, Chekhov, Gogol, Tolstoy, and Pushkin. Russian is the most-spoken Slavic language in the world. It is an official language in Russian, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. It’s related closely to Ukrainian and Belarusian and more distantly related to languages like Serbian, Croatian, Bulgarian, Czech, Polish, Slovak, and Bosnian.

A few facts about the Russian language:

• Russian is the largest language in Europe in terms of native speakers.
• It’s written using the Cyrillic alphabet--another script you can learn in Scripts!

Native Speakers: 126 Million

Japanese has dozens of dialects that are completely unintelligible to each other. They have three types of dialects which include Tokyo, Kyoto-Osaka, and Kyushu. Each of these dialects has many sub-dialects. Moreover, Ryukyuan is a dialect spoken in Okinawa and Amami Islands. Japanese boasts two distinct writing systems, hiragana and katakana, as well as making extensive use of Chinese Kanji characters.

Japanese is one of the most geographically concentrated languages on this list of the most spoken languages in the world because nearly all of the world’s native Japanese speakers live in Japan. Beyond Japan, there are also large groups of native Japanese speakers in the US, Philippines, and Brazil.

A few facts about the Japanese language:

• Japanese uses three writing systems side-by-side--hiragana, katakana, and kanji.
• Japanese has a lot of unique onomatopoeic expressions.

Native Speakers: 118 Million

With varying estimates of around 118 million native speakers, the last spot on the list goes to… Lahnda, a Pakistani macrolanguage that primarily includes Western Punjabi! That doesn’t even include Eastern Punjabi, which is spoken in India. The Punjab was sliced in two by the British when they left, and millions of people were forced to abandon their homes, businesses and families. But they’re slowly taking their revenge, Bollywood-style: Punjabi songs now account for 50 percent of chart-toppers. That’s a comeback if we’ve ever seen one.

Furthermore, it also stands in the third place as one of the Indian languages on the list followed by Bengali, and Hindi-Urdu languages and the fourth most spoken language in the UK.

A few facts about the Western Punjabi language:

• Punjabi is a tonal language. This means that tone is used to indicate meaning much like in Vietnamese or Chinese.