Which is the most common language in the world? Is it English? Yes, to some extent. If we go by the most spoken language in the world, undoubtedly it’s English. But if you go by the language with most native speakers, that would definitely be Chinese.
Undoubtedly the colonial world order till the 19th century played a huge role in popularising English across the globe. The British, being a superpower back then, used to set up colonies across the world.
One of the major reforms that came with colonisation was modernising the education system which included setting up schools which teach English language. Many former English colonies continued to use English as their official language, while some others have English as the most common language, though not the official one.
Going by reports, there are about 1132 million people who speak English which includes 379 million native speakers. On the other hand, Chinese or Mandarin – considered to be the second most spoken language in the world – is spoken by around 1120 million people, of which 918 million are native speakers.
Chinese is spoken in several countries and territories including China, Hong Kong, Tibet, Singapore, Taiwan and Macau. And there are many other countries where there’s a substantial Chinese-speaking population like Indonesia, Thailand and Peninsular Malaysia.
Hindi, India’s official language, is the third most spoken one in the world, closely followed by Spanish. While Hindi has about 600 million speakers, about 543 million people across the globe speak Spanish. Curiously, if we go by the number of native speakers, Spanish would be counted as the second-most spoken language in the world with 460 million native speakers. French with 280 million speakers is the fifth one in the list of most spoken languages in the world. And that’s how it is.