languge

[2004miles]

What are the top 5 languges used the most?

[buddy]

At a guess-top 5 languages (BTW)! English Spanish Mandarin Russian French

[football]

I think the above (then looked-up a book) but the order; Chinese 700 million English 395 million Russian 250 million Spanish 230 million Hindustani 220 million French comes in at number twelve spoken by 95 million.

[bernardo]

I agree definitely Chinese (Mandarin), English and Spanish; but I would guess Hindi and Arabic rather than French and Russian. Especially with languages like English, Fench and Arabic there is the complication of the number of native speakers (mother tongue) vs. the number of competent users (or people who can understand it) including as a second language.

[bernardo]

The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Language (by David Crystal) 1989 page 283 says that the top 20 languages in terms of first-language speakers are (n millions):

1. Chinese 1000
2. English 350
3. Spanish 250
4. Hindi 200
5. Arabic 150
6. Bengali 150
7. Russian 150
8. Portuguese 135
9. Japanese 120
10. German 100
11. French 70
12. Panjabi 70
13. Javanese 65
14. Bihari 65
15. Italian 60
16. Korean 60
17. Telugu 55
18. Tamil 50
19. Marathi 50
20. Vietnamese 50

but that the populations of the countries in which each language has official status are:

1. English 1400
2. Chinese 1000
3. Hindi 700
4. Spanish 280
5. Russian 270
6. French 220
7. Arabic 170
8. Portuguse 160
9. Malay 160
10. Bengali 150
11. Japanese 120
12. German 100
13. Urdu 85
14. Italian 60
15. Korean 60
16. Vietnamese 60
17. Persian 55
18. Tagalog 50
19. Thai 50
20. Turkish 50

although the figures above seem to be out-of-date regarding ther populations of China, India and Pakistan etc. (and in counting the USSR as one country).

[Tigercub67]

Does the language of love count?????