language

[Beckychhatra]

Wich language has the most native speakers

[Hippy]

Although you might think Chinese, as there are a lot of them in the world, I think there are more native Spanish speakers. They don't all live in Spain, you know. This is what the Spanish teacher used to tell us at school, but maybe he was trying to drum up customers for his lessons.

[maxi29]

Mandarin has nearly three times more speakers than Spanish, which is just ahead of English.

[bernardo]

Chinese - Mandarin Chionese has c. 800 million, Spanish has c. 300 million

[Yeah Bee]

If you take all the Chinese languages they win but a man from northern China can't understand a southern. But the can read and write the same. Spanish is the runner up then there is English which must be the most understood language

[bernardo]

We were all referring specifically to Mandarin (800m) and not to the total of all the Chinese languages (1300m).

[Peter Pedant]

The three languages with over a billion native speakers are Mandarin, Arabic and English. I am counting the Americans as naative speakers of English although obviously they arent English.

No I havent counted

Surprisingly two of the Languages are rated as 'difficult' so for example if you are in country's  foreign or consular services, you get sent to the countgry to learn them! LUcky diplomats!