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After reading the last two websites, try to win this game.

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Wordwall - Create better lessons quicker

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1) How many people speak English in the world? a) Around 1.5 billion people. b) 1 billion people. c) 40 million people. d) Around 700 million people. 2) English is the.... a) 1st most spoken language. b) 2nd most spoken language. c) 3rd most spoken language. d) 4th most spoken language. 3) Which is the most spoken native language in the world... a) Spanish b) English c) Hindi d) Mandarin 4) English is the official language of... a) 67 countries b) 100 countries c) over 150 countries d) 300 countries 5) The shortest, oldest, and most commonly used English word is ... a) 'You' b) 'Chores' c) 'I' d) 'House' 6) English is the language of the air because... a) every airplaine in the world is American. b) all the birds have English names. c) people have to speak English while flying. d) pilots have to identify themselves and speak in English. 7) What's the percentage of French words in English? a) 10% b) Around 30% c) Around 50% d) Over 50% 8) A new English word is added to the dictionary... a) every day. b) every week. c) every 3 hours. d) every 2 hours. 9) The most commonly used letter in English is... a) 'A' b) 'B' c) 'Y' d) 'E'

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1) How many people speak English in the world? a) Around 1.5 billion people. b) 1 billion people. c) 40 million people. d) Around 700 million people. 2) English is the.... a) 1st most spoken language. b) 2nd most spoken language. c) 3rd most spoken language. d) 4th most spoken language.

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Read the text and discover!

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Determining what are the most spoken languages in the world is a more difficult task than you might imagine. We can say with some confidence that Mandarin, English, Spanish and Arabic will make an appearance (and roughly in what order), but there are some surprises, too! Would you have guessed that Bengali is in the top 10 most spoken languages?

One small caveat: Assigning hard data, in the form of "X million native speakers," to any of these languages is practically impossible. What constitutes a language or a dialect is hotly contested stuff. More troubling is the fact that what we refer to simply as "Chinese" is actually a whole family of languages conveniently lumped into a single category. "Hindi" is also used as a catchall term to cover numerous dialects and sub-dialects. We haven't even yet acknowledged the unreliability of data sources, collected at different times by different institutions. The numbers below are taken compiled by Ethnologue, which is widely considered the most complete language data source currently in existence.

But then again, who doesn't love a good list? So we've compiled two versions for you.

Top 10 Languages By Number Of Native Speakers

When tallied according to number of native speakers only, these are the most spoken languages in the world.

1. Chinese - 1.3 Billion Native Speakers

Numbers vary widely - Ethnologue puts the number of native speakers at 1.3 billion native speakers, roughly 900 million of whom speak Mandarin - but there's no doubt it's the most spoken language in the world. If you wish to learn a language that one in six people in the world speak, this is the one for you. Seeing as Chinese is a tonal language that uses thousands of logograms, it will certainly keep you busy.

2. Spanish - 485 Million Native Speakers

If we were only to look at native speakers, Spanish is in front of English with about 485 million speakers. If you want a language that will open up whole continents to you, Spanish is your best bet. As with all the languages on this list, the politics of language and associated identity are highly disputed: ask Catalan or Quechua speakers if Spanish is their local tongue and you will get a very different answer. But it is certainly the primary language of most of South and Central America, Spain, and, ahem, large swathes of the US.

3. English - 373 Million Native Speakers

If you're reading this article, you may be one of the 370 million-odd native English speakers, or one of the billion people who speak it as a second language. This indicates the remarkable success of English as the lingua franca of business, travel and international relations. The relative ease with which English can be picked up (especially compared with Chinese) and the pervasive soft power of U.S. culture means that English will continue to dominate the world stage for the foreseeable future. For some, English is still synonymous with opportunity and a better quality of life.

4. Arabic - 362 Million Native Speakers

Recent numbers put Arabic at around 362 million native speakers. But this is another instance of numbers not telling the full tale: Arabic, like Chinese, is so vastly different in its respective dialects as to be effectively a number of languages, grouped as one for the sake of convenience. Modern Standard Arabic is a primarily written form, closely related to the Classical Arabic of the Quran. However, the spoken forms of Arabic in, say, Oman and Morocco are so different that a couple of philosophy professors from these countries might be able to discuss the finer points of the ancient texts while still struggling to order lunch.

5. Hindi - 344 Million Native Speakers

India has 23 official languages, with Hindi/Urdu chief among them. Whether this is one language - Hindustani - or two dialects is still fiercely debated. Spoken mainly in northern India and parts of Pakistan, Hindi uses devnagri script, while Urdu uses Persian notation. If you ever travel in the Indian subcontinent, a little Hindi will get you a long way. Plus, this is the language that gave us shampoo, jungle, jodhpurs and bungalow - what's not to love?

6. Bengali - 234 Million Native Speakers

Admit it: you didn't expect Bengali to be on the list of most spoken languages. The Partition of Bengal by the British in 1947 divided (mainly Hindu) West Bengal, now part of India, from its (mainly Muslim) counterpart East Bengal, now Bangladesh. It is the language of Kolkata, the Andaman Islands, fabulous sweets and 130-odd million Bangladeshis - many of whom are extremely vulnerable to climate change. By the next century, the population is projected to double while 15 percent of the land area is expected to disappear below rising seas.

7. Portuguese - 232 Million Native Speakers

This is another language whose reach owes much to its colonial past. Starting in the 15th century, avid Portuguese traders and conquerors brought their language to Africa, Asia and the Americas. The spread of Portuguese may have initially been tied to European colonization, but the colonized countries developed their own vibrant cultures that transformed the language forever. Today, Portuguese is spoken by 232 million native speakers in countries like Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, and São Tomé and Príncipe. It's also the language of Machado de Assis, Bossa Nova, Mia Couto, Fernando Pessoa and Agualusa.

8. Russian - 154 Million Native Speakers

With roughly 154 million native speakers, Russian is the eighth most spoken language in the world. Famed for its inscrutable grammar and quite lovely Cyrillic script, it remains one of the six languages spoken in the United Nations, and produced the literary likes of Dostoyevsky, Nabokov, Chekhov, Gogol, Tolstoy and Pushkin.

9. Japanese - 125 Million Native Speakers

Almost all of the 125 million native Japanese speakers live in Japan - certainly the most highly geographically concentrated of all the languages on this list. Japanese boasts two distinct writing systems, hiragana and katakana, as well making extensive use of Chinese Kanji characters. The largest groups of Japanese speakers living outside Japan can be found in the United States, the Philippines and Brazil.

10. Lahnda (Western Punjabi) - 101 Million Native Speakers

With varying estimates of around 100 million native speakers, the last spot on the list goes to... Lahnda, a Pakistani macrolanguage that primarily includes Western Punjabi! (Sorry, German - you got dumped from top world languages a few years back.) That doesn't even include Eastern Punjabi, which is spoken in India. The Punjab was sliced in two by the British when they left, and millions of people were forced to abandon their homes, businesses and families. But they're slowly taking their revenge, Bollywood-style: Punjabi songs now account for 50 percent of chart-toppers. That's a comeback if we've ever seen one.

Top 10 Languages By Total Number Of Speakers

When we count the top 10 most spoken languages according to the total number of people who speak them (whether or not the language is their mother tongue), eight of the 10 languages from the list above still make an appearance, but with a few major differences: English narrowly edges out Chinese for the top spot, Japanese and Punjabi lose their spots, and French and Indonesian join the top 10 thanks to the fact that more people speak them as a second language than as a native language.

1. English

1.452 billion total speakers

2. Mandarin Chinese

1.119 billion total speakers

3. Hindi

602 million total speakers

4. Spanish

559 million total speakers

5. Standard Arabic

274 million total speakers

6. French

274 million total speakers

7. Bengali

273 million total speakers

8. Russian

258 million total speakers

9. Portuguese

258 million total speakers

10. Urdu

231 million total speakers

Illustrations by Victoria Fernandez.
This article was originally published in 2015. It has been updated with more recent data and information.

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The 10 Most Spoken Languages In The World

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Almost half of the world's population claim one of only ten languages as their mother tongue. So who's in the Top 10 most spoken languages?

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Read these curiosities about English Language.

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10 Interesting Facts About the English Language that You Didn't Know | Grammarly Blog

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Did you know that enneacontakaienneagon is actually a word in the English language? (And you thought pronouncing supercalifragilisticexpialidocious was difficult?). In fact, the meaning of the word is just as bizarre as the word itself: it's a shape with ninety-nine sides.

Here's a tip: Want to make sure your writing always looks great? Grammarly can save you from misspellings, grammatical and punctuation mistakes, and other writing issues on all your favorite websites.

Compared to other languages, English may seem simple, but that is probably because most people don't realize it is full of crazy inventions, misinterpretations, mistakes, strange words, and needless words!

Let's take a look at ten interesting facts about the English language:

1 "I am" is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.

2 A pangram sentence is one that contains every letter in the language.

For example, the sentence "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" is a pangram.

3 Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious (*breath*) is NOT the longest word in English.

This extra long word (that approximately means "fantastic") was popularized by the movie Mary Poppins and was eventually added to the dictionary. What you probably didn't know is that there is a word that is longer-yes longer-than this one. Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis is a type of lung disease caused by inhaling ash and dust. Go ahead and try pronouncing that!

4 There are "ghost words" that mean nothing.

Believe it or not, there are some words that appeared in the dictionary because of printing errors. The nonexistent word "dord" appeared in the dictionary for eight years in the mid-20th century. It became known as a "ghost word."

5 The shortest, oldest, and most commonly used word is "I."

Medieval manuscripts reveal that some of the oldest words in English are "I," "we," "two," and "three." This makes "I" one of the shortest and oldest words in the English language. It is also the most commonly used word in English conversations.

6 A new word is added to the dictionary every two hours.

Between now and your next meal, a new word will be put into the dictionary. During the course of the year, almost 4,000 new words are added! So, the next time you try to catch the attention of the dissertation committee, try adding some new words to your project.

7 There's a name for words that we repeat often.

Words we always use even though they add no meaning or value to a sentence are called crutch words. For example, in the sentence "Then I was like, OMG, then like, he went there, and like..." it is pretty obvious that "like" is the crutch word. "Actually," "honestly," and "basically" are also commonly used as crutch words.

8 Swims will be swims even when turned upside down.

Such words are called ambigrams.

9 English is the language of the air.

This means that all pilots have to identify themselves and speak in English while flying, regardless of their origin.

10 Girl used to mean small boy or girl.

The word "girl" was not initially used to refer to a specific gender. It used to mean "child" or "young person" regardless of the gender.

Rochelle Ceira is a specialist in English, currently serving as an instructor at a private institute. She also works part-time with a team of dissertation experts at Dissertation Avenue. She's an avid reader of Dan Brown and G.R.R Martin, and she loves to indulge in their novels whenever she has time.

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10 Interesting Facts About the English Language that You Didn't Know

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Guest Post by Rochelle Ceira Did you know that enneacontakaienneagon is actually a word in the English language? (And you thought pronouncing supercalifragilisticexpialidocious was difficult?).

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Watch the video about the importance of English  Language in the world. Take notes of the information you consider relevant.