Language is beyond just conversing but an instrument that connects people together for any course; it could be culturally, for business, immigration and so on. Some languages have gained recognition over the years for the number of speakers they have.
Below are the top most spoken languages in the world:
1. English
English is the most spoken language in the world due to the influence of the former British Empire and the United States of America. In many countries, English became their official language through either colonisation or affiliation. It is a language of trade, aviation, entertainment, tourism, diplomacy and the internet.
English originated from West Germany dialects spoken by Anglo-Saxons. It is a language that borrowed vocabularies from other languages such as French, Latin and Romance. English has various dialects that differ in terms of pronunciation and grammar. The major English dialects are British and North-American English. It is widely spoken by over 1.4 billion people in the world .
2. Mandarin
Mandarin is a language spoken in China. It is one of the country’s major regional languages. It has propagated beyond its origin and is referred to as a standard language.
Mandarin originated from the Beijing dialect but it’s quite different from it. It is written in Chinese characters called “Hanzi” which means “Han characters.” In addition, it uses compound words to conjoin meanings like English. As of today, Mandarin is spoken by over 1.1 billion people.
3. Hindi
Hindi is the official language of India; even though English and other languages are used for business. Irrespective of this, Hindi comes first; it is written in Devanagari script and influenced by Sanskrit. The modern standard of this language emanated from early speakers of “Khari Boli” which includes Muslim invaders from Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and Central Asia.
However, after they settled, the immigrants conformed to India’s culture and in the process lost their own languages. Afterwards, Khari Bholi became more popular. Hindi borrowed words from Arabic and Persian. It is the third most spoken language in the world with an estimate of about 600 million speakers.
4. Spanish
Spanish is one of the most prominent and largely spoken languages in the world. It originated from Vulgar Latin spoken in Iberian Peninsula of Europe. Apart from Spain, some other countries such as Argentina, Dominican Republic, Paraguay, Venezuela adopt Spanish as their official language; at the United Nations, it is one of the top six chosen mediums.
Castilian is the dialect spoken by most Spanish speakers. American countries formed their own standards which differ in phonology and vocabulary but Castilian still serves as a model. It is widely spoken by over 540 million people.
5. Arabic
Arabic is one of the widespread languages used officially after English and French. It is taught and spoken at schools across the world. Arabic has made an impact in science, philosophy and mathematics. European and other languages have been influenced by Arabic, these are: Hindustani, Turkish, Persian , Bengali, Hausa, Swahili, Somali and so on.
For Arabic, words were borrowed from English, French, Latin and Hebrew to mention a few. Classical Arabic can be found in the Quran while the Modern Standard Arabic is similar but relegate some vocabularies and grammatical structures. The new words adopted are used in describing concepts that arose in recent times. It has over 370 million speakers worldwide.
6. French
French is the official language of France. It is an international language; it is used in science, literature and many international organisations such as the European Union, United Nations, International Olympic Committee among others.
It is quite an influential language in the aspects of education, journalism and diplomacy. French shares some similarities with Latin but there are differences in their phonologies and grammar — which is quite easy compared to Latin. It is the sixth most spoken language in the world with about 320 million speakers.
7. Portuguese
Portuguese is an official language of Portugal, Mozambique, Angola to mention a few. It originated from Iberian Peninsula of Europe. Colonisation is a major factor that contributed to the spread of the language.
The standard Portuguese is mostly preferred by all the speaking countries including the ones in Africa. Even though Portuguese is widely spoken, it just has two dialects — the Brazilian and European version; used for learning. It has over 300 million speakers.
8. Bengali
Bengali is the most spoken and official language in Bangladesh; also in Barak Valley of Assam, Tripura and Indian States of West Bengal. There are speakers of the language in some countries such as Malaysia, Canada, Australia, Italy, Singapore and so on.
It originated from Bengali script derived from “Brahmin” — an ancient Indian script. In addition, Bengali has been greatly affected by languages in South Asia (Tibeto-Burman, Dravidian and Austroasiatic) in the aspects of vocabulary and structure. Bengali has over 290 million speakers in the world.
9. Russian
Russian language is primarily spoken in Russia and other countries such as Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova and Tajikistan. It is one of the four surviving Slavic languages — a form of communication used by East Slavic tribes from the mid 9th to 13th centuries.
It is a language written in the Russian alphabet called “Cyrillic script.” Over the years, the Russian language has been influenced by Central European, South and Western languages such as Dutch, French, English, Italian, Latin, Arabic, Hebrew, Persian and Polish. Across the world, there are over 270 million people who speak Russian.
10. Urdu
Urdu, an Indo-Aryan language is mostly spoken in South Asia. It is the official language of Pakistan alongside English. Urdu and Hindi are quite similar in terms of their syntax, phonology and grammar derived from Sanskrit and Prakrit.
Urdu has incorporated several words from regional languages. In Pakistan, it was basically adopted as a unifying language for them (because of several dialects and languages in the country) and Muslims of Colonial India that migrated there. As one of the most spoken languages in the world, Urdu has 230 million speakers.
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