Which Languages Have the Most Speakers?

It comes as no surprise that English reigns supreme, with over 1.1 billion total speakers—or roughly 15% of the global population.
Mandarin Chinese, Hindi, Spanish, and French round out the top five.
Rank Language Total Speakers Language Origin
1 English 1,132 million Indo-European
2 Mandarin Chinese 1,117 million Sino-Tibetan
3 Hindi 615 million Indo-European
4 Spanish 534 million Indo-European
5 French 280 million Indo-European
6 Standard Arabic 274 million Afro-Asiatic
7 Bengali 265 million Indo-European
8 Russian 258 million Indo-European
9 Portuguese 234 million Indo-European
10 Indonesian 199 million Austronesian
However, this is only one piece in the full fabric of languages.
The metrics for native speakers tell a slightly different tale, as Mandarin Chinese shoots up to 918 million—almost 2.5x that of English
native speakers.
Rank Language Native Speakers Language Origin
1 Mandarin Chinese 918 million Sino-Tibetan
2 Spanish 460 million Indo-European
3 English 379 million Indo-European
4 Hindi 341 million Indo-European
5 Bengali 228 million Indo-European
6 Portuguese 221 million Indo-European
7 Russian 154 million Indo-European
8 Japanese 128 million Japanic
9 Western Punjabi 93 million Indo-European
10 Marathi 83 million Indo-European

Note: No native speaker data was available for Filipino, Standard Arabic, Nigerian Pidgin, or Cameroonian Pidgin.
Here, Spanish comes in strong second for native speakers with 460 million, considering it’s well-used across Latin America. The
Indian languages of Hindi and Bengali cap off the top five by native speakers as well.
These are the biggest languages people learn growing up, but what about the ones they pick up later in life?