Here's a listing of the eleven most popular languages spoken worldwide, along with the estimated number of speakers for each. UPDATED: 1. Mandarin Chinese - 882 million
2. Spanish - 325 million
3. English - 312-380 million
4. Arabic - 206-422 million
5. Hindi - 181 million
6. Portuguese - 178 million
7. Bengali - 173 million
8. Russian - 146 million
9. Japanese - 128 million
10. German - 96 million the accurate one
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The worlds most spoken language is mandarin Chinese with approximately 500,000,000 people speaking the language.
While Mandarin is by far the world's most popular First Language (i.e. language that is learned from birth), with over 800 million, English is by far the world's most popular Second (or, non-Primary) Language. Roughly 200+ million speak Mandarin as an additional language, while estimates are that almost 500 million speak some form of English as a second language.
Mandarin wins overall, with a bit over 1 billion total speakers, with English in second at around 800 million, and Spanish third, at 450 million or so.
In terms of specific usage areas, English wins by a landslide. 90% of all scientific papers are published in English. Roughly half of all published literature is in English. The world-wide air-traffic-control language is a (very abbreviated) form of English. Over half of all non-live TV programs and Films are originally in English.
It depends on what you mean by popular. The second most widely spoken language is Spanish.