WEB CHUTNEY

We use language everyday, it is something that we pick from our parents and friends as toddlers, most of the time we don’t even know what we’re learning!

But with the advent of globalisation and increased travel growing every single day, the need to learn more than one language is more important than ever.

Also, if you know more languages, chances of getting good jobs are higher.

These are the 10 of the worlds most widely spoken languages:

1. Mandarin Chinese

Number of speakers: 960 million native speakers.

Mandarin Chinese is just one of many Chinese dialects and is spoken by over a billion people worldwide. Around 16% of the entire population of the world speak some form of Chinese – mostly Mandarin.

2. English

Number of speakers: 508 million speakers

English is the official language of an impressive 54 separate countries, and according to an estimate 359 million people speak English as their native language.

3. Spanish

Number of speakers: 392 million

20 different countries use Spanish as an official language. If you want to learn a language that opens up whole continents to you, Spanish is your best pick.

4. Hindi

Number of speakers: 497 million

Hindi is the primary language of India’s crowded population, and it includes a huge number of dialects.

5. Arabic

Number of speakers: 246 million

Arabic is one of the world’s oldest languages, it is spoken in the Middle East, with speakers found in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Egypt.

6. Bengali

Number of speakers: 211 million

Bengali is the native language of Bangladesh. It is the language of Kolkata, of the Andaman Islands, and of 170-odd million Bangladeshis.

7. Russian

Number of speakers: 277 million

Russian is the most widely spoken of all the Slavic languages. It is an official language in four countries including Kyrgyzstan, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia.

8. Portuguese

Number of speakers: 191 million

Portuguese is the official language of Portugal and nine other countries. It is spoken in Brazil widely being their national language.

9. Japanese

Number of speakers: 125 million

This is certainly the most highly geographically concentrated of all the languages on this list. Japanese boasts two distinct writing systems, hirogana and katakana. The written language developed from Chinese many hundreds of years ago.

10. German

Number of speakers:100 million speakers

German is widely spoken in Germany being its native language, but other than that it is the official language of six different countries worldwide.