The infographic above lists down the top 10 languages of the world in terms of total number of speakers as per Wikipedia. This data is supplemented with other pieces of information about the language like its history, most spoken countries and how to say ‘I love you’ in it.
The following are some interesting observations from the graphic above:
- English has the highest number of speakers as second language while Mandarin has highest number of first language speakers.
- Standard Arabic (100%) and Indonesian (78%) have highest percentages of second language speakers as a percentage of total speakers. Standard Arabic is not spoken as first language anywhere and is only used for printing which drives the percentage of second language speakers up. French and English have 72% and 71% second language speakers respectively.
- Portugese (14%), Bengali (14%) and Spanish (14%) have lowest percentages of second language speakers as a percentage of total speakers.
- Indonesia is the youngest language among these while Mandarin is the oldest.
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