Beyond communication, languages are a tool that opens the door to understanding more about the global economy, history, and culture. In fact, about 7,164 of them are currently in use.
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But, from this number, What are the most spoken languages?
The linguistic information platform Ethnologue annually presents its list of the most spoken languages in the world. To rank it, the list took into account both native and non-native speakers.
By 2023, English topped the rankings, with nearly 1.5 billion speakers. Followed by Mandarin Chinese with about 1.13 billion, and Hindi with more than 600 million.
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Languages iStock
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The Spanish language comes in fourth place, as it is spoken by more than 500 million people.. Next comes the French language, which is spoken by more than 309 million people. Arabic has more than 274 million, and Bengali has more than 272 million.
Rounding out the top ten were: Portuguese (over 260 million), Russian (over 250 million), and Urdu (over 230 million).
The classification also consists, in this order, of other languages such as Indonesian, German, Japanese, Nigerian Pidgin, Egyptian Arabic, Marathi, Telugu and Turkish.
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