The #1 language depends on the metric: English is #1 by total speakers (native + second language), with over 1.4 billion, making it the global lingua franca, while Mandarin Chinese is #1 by native speakers, with nearly a billion, due to China's massive population. Spanish, Hindi, and French round out the top spots in both categories, though their rankings shift slightly.
1. Chinese — 1.3 Billion Native Speakers. Numbers vary widely — Ethnologue puts the number of native speakers at 1.3 billion native speakers, roughly 900 million of whom speak Mandarin — but there's no doubt it's the most spoken language in the world.
There's no single "hardest" language, but Mandarin Chinese is consistently ranked #1 for English speakers due to its tonal nature (four tones change word meanings) and complex logographic writing system requiring thousands of characters. Other top contenders often cited include Arabic (right-to-left script, complex sounds, grammar) and Japanese (multiple writing systems like Kanji, Hiragana, Katakana, plus honorifics). The difficulty depends heavily on your native language, with languages like Tibetan, Estonian, and Polish also challenging learners with unique grammar or cases.
Historians and linguists generally agree that Sumerian, Akkadian and Egyptian are the oldest languages with a clear written record. All three are extinct, meaning they are no longer used and do not have any living descendants that can carry the language to the next generation.
Indeed, while some languages might have more entries in a standard dictionary, linguists and historians often crown Arabic as the undisputed richest language in the world due to its unique root system and massive lexical volume.
10 Easiest Languages for English Speakers to Learn
Generally speaking, Japanese is more difficult than Chinese when it comes to grammar. Mandarin Chinese is an analytical language, like English, and each word has only one form, no matter how it's being used in a sentence. It's also a subject-verb-object language, like English.
English is the number one international language (lingua franca), boasting around 1.5 billion total speakers, making it dominant in global business, technology, and tourism, even though Mandarin Chinese has more native speakers. While Mandarin is the largest by native speakers, English's vast number of second-language users cements its role as the primary global communication tool, followed by Mandarin Chinese, Hindi, and Spanish in overall speaker numbers.
When Bolivia adopted its 2009 constitution, 37 languages were elevated to “official” status.
The 6 Languages With The Most Significant Growth Rates Worldwide
Propio Lists Some of the Rarest Languages Still Spoken Today
Powell Alexander Janulus (born 1939) is a Canadian polyglot who lives in White Rock, British Columbia, and entered the Guinness World Records in 1985 for fluency in 42 languages.
Papua New Guinea is the world's most multilingual country, with a total of 840 languages spoken.
The 5 most spoken languages in the world
China dominates in raw numbers across the board, fielding a massive 2 million troops and a huge inventory of armor and aircraft, supported by a $230B budget. Japan's Self-Defense Forces, while smaller (240K troops, $53B budget), are known for their high-tech, modern equipment and training.
Yes, achieving conversational fluency in Japanese within two years is possible with intense, consistent study (4+ hours/day), but true professional or near-native fluency takes much longer (2-5+ years), depending heavily on your definition of "fluent," study quality, immersion, and prior language experience, with the US Foreign Service Institute suggesting 88 weeks (2,200 hours) for full-time learners to reach proficiency.
The Japanese 80/20 rule refers to Hara Hachi Bu (腹八分目), a Confucian teaching meaning "eat until you are 80% full," a mindful practice from Okinawa linked to longevity, where you stop eating before feeling completely stuffed to avoid overconsumption and promote health. It encourages slowing down, listening to your body's hunger cues, and leaving some space in your stomach, leading to lower calorie intake and reduced risk of chronic diseases.
Consequently, the impact of various languages has transformed English into a distinctive blend of Germanic and Romance tongues. Dutch, Frisian, and German stand as the nearest kin to English, with Frisian holding the strongest resemblance.
Japanese is often considered the quickest spoken language due to its rapid syllable rate and efficient communication style.
Norwegian. Norwegian, a North Germanic language, stands out for its simplicity in grammar and syntax, especially for English speakers. The language has a lot of vocabulary that closely resembles English, making it relatively easy to acquire new words.
Our data revealed that the top languages spoken by billionaires on this list were Chinese, French and Spanish – which is unsurprising, as China is the third largest country in the world. Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder of Facebook and worth $67,300,000,000 (£55.8bn) speaks Chinese as his second language.
10 of the Hardest Words in English to Pronounce
Tamil. The record holder for the world's oldest language still in use today goes to Tamil. Around 78 million people speak Tamil, mostly in Sri Lanka (an island nation southeast of India), southern India, and Singapore. Tamil is one of 300+ languages Propio works in for translation and interpretation services.