Language forms the backbone of communal existence. If you’ve ever traveled to a place where you don’t speak the language, it doesn’t take long to discover this.

Where is the nearest bathroom? How much does this cost? From the most rudimentary questions of human survival to complex religious and philosophical texts, language is one of the greatest tools society can offer for us to communicate with one another and understand the world around us.

Countless dialects exist across the globe, some closely related to one another and others completely foreign. Find out which language is the most commonly spoken, and which new one might be easiest for you to learn.

What is the most spoken language in the world?

Online language tool Babbel reports that English is the most spoken language in the world, with a number of speakers totaling more than 1.4 billion in 2022, according to Statistic & Data. This combines both native and non-native speakers.

If you shift the definition strictly to native speakers, Babbel reports that Chinese – a designation including Mandarin along with a number of other dialects is the winning language, with 1.3 billion native speakers. Mandarin itself is the second most spoken language in the world.

What are the top 10 most spoken languages in the world?

Statistics & Data reports that the top 10 most spoken languages in the world, in order, are:

• English
• Mandarin Chinese
• Hindi
• Spanish
• French
• Bengali
• Modern Arabic
• Portuguese
• Russian
• Urdu

 

What is the easiest language to learn?

This is a subjective question. Different languages operate on varied sets of characters and certain languages are easier or harder to learn based on your mother tongue.

For native English speakers, Babbel reports that Norwegian is one of the easiest languages to learn. Like English, it is a Germanic tongue, therefore sharing some vocabulary. The pronunciation and grammar are also straightforward.

Other languages that might be easier for English speakers include:

• Swedish
• Spanish
• Dutch
• Portuguese
• Indonesian
• Italian
• French
• Swahili

 

This article was first published on USA today – and you can read the article in full here.