The 10 most spoken languages in the world: English only comes in at number 3
Created: 08/19/2022, 17:11
By: Jason Blaschke
According to Travelbook, there are more than 6,000 actively spoken languages worldwide.
But only every second person speaks one of the ten most commonly spoken languages.
1 / 10Around 1.3 billion people in the world speak Chinese, making it the most spoken language in the world.
The most difficult to learn is the UR variant, Mandarin Chinese.
© Oliver Berg/picture alliance/dpa
2 / 10After Chinese, Hindi, the official language of India, is in second place with around 525 million speakers. Incidentally, Hindi is similar to German - some words such as khaki, punch and veranda originally come from Hindi.
© Archive/dpa
3 / 10Despite its large presence, the world language English only manages to come in third in the ranking of the most spoken languages.
But with 510 million speakers, English is the official language in 85 countries.
© Archive/dpa
4 / 10It is estimated that there are 389 million Spanish speakers worldwide.
Also because the language is the official language in many nations in South and Central America.
Curious: there are more Spanish speakers abroad than in the country itself. © Patrick Pleul/dpa
5 / 10Arabic is the 5th most spoken language in the world with around 290 million speakers - the Koran itself is written in Old Arabic.
© Archive/picture alliance/dpa
6 / 10Russia is the largest country in the world in terms of area.
No wonder that the language is in the ranking of the most spoken.
Due to the Soviet Union, Russian is also the official language in several countries in Eastern Europe.
© Mikhail Klimentyev/dpa
7 / 10Apart from soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo, around 270 million people speak Portuguese.
Due to colonialism, the language is still widespread in parts of South Africa and Southeast Asia.
© Jon Super/AP/dpa
8 / 10In addition to Hindi, Bengali or Bengali is also a recognized official language in India, which is primarily spoken in Bangladesh.
A total of 250 million people worldwide speak Bengali.
© Mustasinur Rahman Alvi/dpa
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9 / 10With around 200 million speakers, Malay-Indonesian is the 9th most spoken language in the world.
The Latin alphabet is used in the language, which makes the language quite easy to learn for Germans.
© Archive/dpa
10 / 10Germany is only 12th in the ranking of the most spoken languages with a number of speakers of 118 million people. But that is also remarkable when you consider that German is only spoken in a few neighboring countries apart from Germany.
© Kay Nietfeld/dpa