Chinese

The Standard of Chinese is Mandarin, which is a group of Sinitic languages natively spoken across most of northern and northern China. The group includes the Beijing dialect, the basis of the phonology of Standard Chinese. Mandarin is often cited as the most difficult language for English speakers to learn.

For Chinese newbies, the writing system is a big deal for you because Chinese has many different characters, the Chinese script has more than 80,000 characters. To be able to read and write, one must memorize about 2,000 characters, so it will take you more time to learn about Chinese characters through many articles and regularly talking with native speakers. On the other hand, Chinese has many similar tones, which makes it easy to confuse and misunderstand the true meaning of the word.

For example, "mai" with a falling tone means “sell” (mái卖) but when pronounced with a tone that falls and then rises, it means “buy” (măi买). But instead, Chinese grammar is not difficult and very easy to understand.

Native speakers: 1.3 Billion

Refer to: https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/the-10-most-spoken-languages-in-the-world