JAKARTA- Language is one of the main communication tools used by humans in society.
Each country has its own official language. However, there are several languages in the world which are commonly spoken in various countries.
English is the international language with the largest number of speakers in the world. Launched from The Ethnologue page, the popularity of the English language is due to the invasion of the British Empire and the spread of American culture.
Not just English, here are 4 other languages with the most speakers in the world.
1. English
The language with the most speakers in the world is held by English.
The language is spoken in 146 countries, with the majority of speakers being non-native. The number of native speakers of English is only 373 million people, very different from the number of non-native speakers of 1.08 billion people.
Thanks to the invasion and spread of culture, English is widely spoken in various parts of the world.
Countries that make English their primary language include the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Ireland, and New Zealand.
2. Mandarin
Unlike English, most Chinese speakers are native speakers.
China itself became the first most populous country with a total population of 1.4 billion. No wonder Mandarin is the largest language in the world if calculated by the number of native speakers.
According to the World Population Review, about 70% of mainland China’s population can speak Mandarin, but only 10% are fluent.
The number of native Mandarin speakers reaches 920 million and non-native speakers up to 199 million people.
Since the majority of speakers are native speakers, the spread of Mandarin is more concentrated than that of English, which only exists in 38 countries.
Mandarin is the official language in Singapore, China and Taiwan. Interestingly, Chinese is also one of the six official languages of the United Nations (UN).
3.Hindi
Hindi ranks third with 602 million speakers. Hindi is one of the 22 official languages defined by the constitution of the Government of India.
Like Mandarin, the use of Hindi is dominated by native speakers. This is not surprising given that India is the second most populous country after China.
Apart from India, the use of Hindi is also found in Bangladesh, Yemen, as far as South Africa.
Hindi literature is generally written in Devanagari script. It is also used in Sanskrit, Prakrit, Hindi, Marathi and Nepali.
4. Spain
Spanish ranks fourth with 549 million speakers. Just like the previous two languages, the use of Spanish is dominated by native speakers with a total of 475 million speakers.
This figure makes Spanish the second most spoken language by number of native speakers, after Mandarin.
The language, known as Castilian, is the official language of Spain.
Besides Spain, Spanish is also the official language of 18 American countries, such as Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, up to Costa Rica.
Among these countries, Mexico is the country with the most Spanish speakers with approximately 110 million speakers.
Although it has spread to various countries, the usage of Spanish in each country has a different accent and vocabulary.
