English. English is the most-studied language. It's the only language that tallies more than a billion students. Across the globe, more than 520 million speak English as a native or additional language, and it's the official language of more than 50 countries.
As China's global influence expands, Mandarin Chinese is expected to become even more widely spoken, potentially making it the most spoken language in the world by 2050. Mandarin Chinese is made up of a group of Chinese (Sinitic) dialects.
English takes the crown as the most common second language around the world with 55 countries speaking it as a second language. France and Russia are second and third with 14 and 13 respectively. The languages are grouped and colour-coded by language family (languages with a common ancestor).
Across multiple sources, Mandarin Chinese is the number one language listed as the most challenging to learn. The Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center puts Mandarin in Category IV, which is the list of the most difficult languages to learn for English speakers.
Indo-Aryan Languages
Both Hindi and Urdu from the Indo-Aryan language are potential languages of the future. Hindi is the native language of 535 million people in India. Like China, this population continues to grow every year. Urdu is widely spoken by 170 million people around the world.
Examples of a Dead Language
But Latin isn't the only dead language, some of the other known dead languages are Sanskrit, Biblical Hebrew, Ancient Greek and Gothic, all of which are still studied both academically and religiously.
Arabic. The global importance of Arabic is clear: it's the 3rd most common language, with more than 300 million native speakers spread throughout 57 countries in the world.
The languages that takes the number 1 place in our list and therefore, the most spoken first language in the world is, by far, Mandarin Chinese. Mandarin is only one of the many Chinese dialects spoken in China. However, it is officially considered the Official Language of the People's Republic of China.
Latin is by far the most well-known dead language. Though it has been considered a dead language for centuries, it is still taught in school as an important way to understand many languages.
Since 1950, the number of unique languages spoken throughout our world has steadily declined. Today, the voices of more than 7,000 languages resound across our planet every moment, but about 2,900 or 41% are endangered. At current rates, about 90% of all languages will become extinct in the next 100 years.
It's unlikely that we'll see a world that speaks one language any time soon. Protecting each individual countries' cultures is a huge barrier, but an important one to ensure our world is as beautifully diverse as it's always been.
Most languages, though, die out gradually as successive generations of speakers become bilingual and then begin to lose proficiency in their traditional languages. This often happens when speakers seek to learn a more-prestigious language in order to gain social and economic advantages or to avoid discrimination.
Language grows and continuously adapts, evolving as we come up with better words that reflect our society or culture. In particular, it mirrors the complexity with which our lives intertwine with technology. When our technology evolves quicker than ever before, so too does our language.
The easiest languages for English speakers to learn are: Danish, Dutch, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, Swedish, and French.
1. Italian When it comes to the most attractive languages, for many people the native language of Italy likely springs to mind. Italian is a famously beautiful language with its rolled 'r's, round vowels, and melodic rhythm.
So what exactly makes a language “harsh”? There is no singular defining element, but the languages that English natives tend to view as harsh, including German, Dutch, and Russian, incorporate many noises made at the back of the throat –– these are called uvular fricatives.
Of the thousands of different languages spoken around the world, the one language that has been regarded as the 'queen of all languages' is Kannada. Kannada is spoken in the southern state of Karnataka and is one of the most prominent Dravidian languages in India.
Aramaic is best known as the language Jesus spoke. It is a Semitic language originating in the middle Euphrates. In 800-600 BC it spread from there to Syria and Mesopotamia. The oldest preserved inscriptions are from this period and written in Old Aramaic.