Numbers Don't Lie

Tuesday, May 02, 2006

The top 10 most spoken languages in the world

1. Chinese (Mandarin)= 1,000,000,000 +
2. English = 508,000,000
3. Hindustani (Hindi and Urdu)= 497,000,000
4. Spanish = 392,000,000
5. Russian = 277,000,000
6. Arabic = 246,000,000
7. Bengali = 211,000,000
8. Portuguese = 191,000,000
9. Malay-Indonesian = 159,000,000
10. French = 129,000,000
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12 Comments:

Blogger Nathan said...

wow... good to know, thanks!

12:08 AM

 
Blogger Sicilian said...

Well those stats would make you wonder why we are not teaching chinese in the country. It seems like that would be the most important language to learn.

12:10 AM

 
Blogger High Power Rocketry said...

Go english go!

9:02 AM

 
Blogger Microbefox said...

Ahh Mandarin the language of business. I'm Filipino by blood, but English and French raised. I think it's too late for me to learn another language; especially a language that has more than a thousand characters.

Yikes!

7:32 PM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

are they real these statistics?

2:00 PM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

You need to distinguish between first and second language speakers, and between levels of fluency, to make these numbers meaningful.

English may be the world's second language, but that ranges from the Indian hotelier who knows a few dozen words and phrases to communicate with tourists, through the German businessman who can negotiate deals in English but can't discuss the weather, to the Swiss polyglot who speaks 12 languages perfectly.

10:25 AM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Vamos espaƱol ya casi llegamos!!!! :D

8:47 PM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

why isn't Japanese in the list?

6:41 PM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

its greattoknow that

7:57 PM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

it looks like the figure for English speakers may be primary speakers only. that would grossly understate the total number of speakers

7:21 PM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

BULLSHIT!!!!!!!!
you "americans" think your the shit. This list is so totally wrong, english is about the 4th most talked language, chinese is the first and spanish is the second.

10:10 AM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

you could put in the percents to better help peaple understand the figures.

8:00 AM

 

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