The most spoken language in the world by total number of speakers (including native and second-language speakers) is English , with approximately 1.5 billion speakers worldwide as of 2025
. English's global dominance is largely due to its role as the international lingua franca in business, science, technology, and online content, being spoken in 186 countries and official in 67. However, when considering only native speakers, Mandarin Chinese ranks first, with about 941 million native speakers and over 1.1 billion total speakers including second-language users
. Mandarin's large native speaker base is mainly due to China's vast population. In summary:
- English : ~1.5 billion total speakers (380 million native)
- Mandarin Chinese : ~1.1 billion total speakers (941 million native)
Thus, English is the most spoken language globally by total speakers, while Mandarin Chinese has the highest number of native speakers.
