Language has become our vital communication tool since ancient times. Oral interaction was supposed to foster cooperation among a small group of people. And as the population grew, so expanded the language. Although some languages still circulate on a small piece of land, others have an overwhelming influence. The latter ones are in the spotlight of today’s article.
Of course, you have already known what languages are most popular in the world. Five of these are Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, English, Hindi, and Arabic. Let’s look through all of them and find out what has made them so powerful.
The first language to discuss is, of course, Chinese. That is the only language out of these five that has preserved a unique writing system. There is no alphabet in Chinese. Due to this fact, the language remains one of the hardest to learn.
The main reason for it being the leader by the number of speakers is the population of the Republic of China. It has around 1,2 billion native speakers. Different forms of Chinese are also spoken in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Macau.
Spanish has strong positions in terms of being spread in different parts of the world. It is currently announced as an official language (de jure or de facto) in 20 countries. So, a significant number of Spanish speakers have been situated way farther from Spain itself. Most of them live in Hispanic America that used to be a Spanish colony.
Another country that has significantly changed the life of its colonies was The British Colonial Empire. From the 17th till 20th century the power of Briton was distributed almost in all contents, including North America, Asia, and Australia. The language policy and migration have had an impact on popularizing the language.
The language of Indians entered the list of most spoken languages too. The official Hindi also includes several dialects. These days native speakers of Hindi live almost only in the North and Central parts of India. It is not registered as an official language anywhere else. Despite this, Hindi is widely spread in Fiji accounting for more than 40% of native speakers. Similar to Chinese, Indians have made their language one of the most spoken ones. The large population is the primary reason.
Finally, let’s move on to Arabic. The language has one of the richest vocabularies in the world. According to the Palestine-based Arabic language center, it has approximately 12.2 million words. In comparison, English has only 600 thousand whole words! The endless variety and depth of Arabic have made it famous for being the hardest to translate. Nevertheless, it is an official language in 26 states and is common to learn overseas.
These were the most spoken languages on the Planet! We’re sure you’ve discovered something new and found inspiration to take up learning one of them.