According to the 2018 Ethnologue catalog, there are 7,097 languages spoken in the world.
Agree, it would be interesting to know which of them is the most common.
Probably the first language that comes to mind is Chinese, which is not surprising given the number of people living in China.
But in reality, it all depends on how you count the number of people who speak a particular language.
So, if we understand prevalence as the number of people who consider a language their native language, then Chinese actually comes first – 918 million people speak it, or, in percentage terms, almost 12% of the world’s population.
However, for many people who speak, for example, Chinese, it is not their native language. Chinese serves as a second language for 200 million people around the world - you must admit, this is not much, considering the number of people for whom this language is their native language.
The situation is different for English: about 370 million people consider it their native language, while more than 978 million use English as a second language.
It is easy to guess what needs to be done to get the total number of speakers - just add up the number of people for whom the language is their native language and those who use it as a second language.
So, the gold goes to English with 1.348 billion speakers, the silver goes to Chinese with 1.12 billion speakers, and the bronze goes to Hindi with 600 million speakers.
Earlier we told you about the tallest pyramid of champagne glasses.
