Happy Language Day! Or technically, International Mother Language Day. It’s been celebrated since the ’70s. UNESCO made it a recognized thing in 1999.
Over 7,000 languages are spoken around the world, 7,164. But almost half of the world’s countries have one of just TEN as their “official” language.
Babbel looked at how many native speakers there are for each one. So, just people FROM places where it’s the official language. Can you guess what #1 is?
1. Chinese. 1.3 billion native speakers. Just saying “Chinese” lumps a bunch of dialects together. But around 900 million speak Mandarin.
2. Spanish, 486 million. It’s the official language in Spain, Mexico, and most of South America.
3. English, 380 million. (Only third. But hang tight on that for a minute . . .)
4. Arabic, 362 million.
5. Hindi, 345 million. It’s the most spoken language in India.
6. Bengali, 237 million. Spoken in parts of India and in Bangladesh. (175 million people live in Bangladesh. It’s about the size of Iowa.)
7. Portuguese, 236 million. It’s the national language of Brazil.
8. Russian, 148 million.
9. Japanese, 123 million.
10. Lahnda, 118 million. (LON-duh) Spoken in India and Pakistan.
That’s the Top 10 for native speakers. But if you look at TOTAL worldwide, the results are different: ENGLISH is #1, it’s spoken by over 1.5 billion people. Then it’s Mandarin, Hindi, Spanish, Arabic, and French.
(Babbel)
