The 20 Most Spoken Languages in the World

(via Mental Floss) Every year, Ethnologue mines the data on more than 7000 languages to find out which ones are spoken most across the globe. English tops the 2021 list with an estimated 1.35 billion speakers worldwide. When it comes to native speakers, however, runner-up Mandarin Chinese is miles ahead—boasting around 921 million native speakers to English’s paltry 370 million. Read on to find out which languages fill out the top 20, along with some fascinating facts about them.