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Thats three languages between more than 2 billion people.
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These 114 languages have so few speakers you could fit them in Barcelonas Camp Nou stadium 170 times.
Its worth remembering, though, that these numbers are always changing, and our knowledge of the worlds languages is constantly being refined. The Ethnologue data represents one approximation of the situation.
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English takes bronze, although its far more widely spoken than Spanish or Chinese, according to Ethnologue. English is established in 106 countries, compared to 37 for Chinese and 31 for Spanish.
Its probably no surprise that Chinese tops the ranking. Nearly 1.3 billion people speak a variation of Chinese as their first language. This aggregation includes more than 10 varieties; some that youve heard of, such as Mandarin, and others, such as Pu-Xian, that you might be unfamiliar with.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.
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There are over 1,000 languages with between 100 and 999 speakers, more than 300 with between 10 and 99, and 114 with nine speakers or less.
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Chinese, Spanish and English are estimated to be the three most spoken languages in the world.
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Spanish takes second place and youre part of a big club if you speak it: 437 million other people, primarily in Spain, Latin America and parts of the US, are also members.
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However you say it, we all speak at least one. In fact, more than a quarter of us speak one of just three languages as our native tongue, according to data fromEthnologue, a database of languages.
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Those three, and the rest of the top 10 most spoken languages in the world, are all visualized in this chart by Statista.
