- What is the most spoken language in the world?
(upbeat music)
Hello, I'm Julian Northbrook from doingenglish.com,
the place for intermediate to advanced English learners
to take their English as it is now
and drag it up to the levels of extraordinary.
I don't know why everyone in the whole world
doesn't just speak English.
It would make life a hell of a lot easier.
I mean, English is already the most spoken language
in the whole world.
What's that?
English is not the most spoken language in the whole world?
You're having me on, aren't ya?
But no, darling, I ain't having you on.
There are only around 340 million speakers of English
as a native language
making it the third most common language.
And the second,
that'll be Spanish with around 400 million native speakers
but of course, when talking about an international language
such as English, it doesn't really make sense
to just look at native speakers,
so let's add the non-native speakers
into the mix as well.
Spanish has around 400 million native speakers
and then another 172
or there abouts million non-native speakers
making a grand total
of about 572 million speakers of Spanish.
Compare this with English
which only has 340 million native speakers
but has an additional 500 million non-native speakers
making a grand total of 840 million speakers of English.
But you know what?
That still ain't enough
to make it number one.
Oh no.
Not by a long shot.
So, come on, tell me,
what do you think it is?
What do you think is the most widely spoken language
in the whole world?
If you said Chinese,
you are very much correct.
There are around a billion people who speak Mandrin
and about 1.2 billion,
that's about 16% of the entire world's population
who speak some form of Chinese.
So, in terms of shear number of speakers,
Chinese is right up there at number one,
the undisputed king.
So, if we are thinking
that the language with the most speakers
has the right to become the de facto language
of the world world,
then yeah, we shouldn't be learning English at all,
we should be learning Chinese.
Of course though simply having a lot of speakers
is not enough in and of itself
to make a language an international language
which is why English is the international language,
not Chinese or indeed, Spanish.
Part of the problem of course
is the perceived difficulty of learning a language
such as Chinese
but that is not the only problem.
There are other important factors to consider
when looking at English and its rise to the top.
That, however, is a topic for another day
'cause we are done and dusted with this video.
Like it or lump it,
English as an international language
is here to stay
and if you are struggling to speak it extraordinary well,
you, my friend would do well
to grab a copy of my book,
Master English Fast,
an Uncommon Guide to Speaking Extraordinary English.
It'll show you the intermediate
to advanced English learner
step by simple step everything that you need to do
to taking your boring, mundane English as it is now
and drag it up to the highest proficiency levels.
It comes as a paperback copy.
You can get it on Kindle
and regardless of how you get it,
it also comes with a complete audio version
for your listening enjoyment.
All you've got to do
is register your book
using the instructions in the back
and you can download it on your computer
or on your phone
or wherever it is that you wanna download it.
With that, I'm Julian Northbrook
signing off from another video.
Ciao.
Hey, hey, yeah, you, you,
before I go,
one more thing.
If you liked today's video,
you're almost definitely gonna wanna check out this one
which explains why the Brits are so crap
at learning foreign languages
and this one which explains
why the Dutch are so damn good at English.
Go on, check them out.