The Most Spoken Languages: Native vs. Non-Native Speakers
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Key Takeaways
- English is the most spoken language globally, with over 1.5 billion total speakers.
- Mandarin Chinese has the largest number of native speakers, nearing 1 billion.
- Only about 26% of English speakers are native speakers, highlighting its position as a global second language.
Language plays a central role in shaping global communication, culture, and economic exchange. While some languages dominate due to large native-speaking populations, others achieve global reach through widespread adoption as a second language.
This infographic compares the native and non-native usage of the world’s most spoken languages in 2025, using data from Ethnologue.
The World’s Most Spoken First and Second Languages
English is the most spoken language with approximately 1.53 billion speakers worldwide.
However, just 390 million people speak English as their first language, meaning nearly 75% of English speakers use it as a second language, making it the dominant global lingua franca across industries and professions.
The table below shows native and non-native speaker counts for the world’s most spoken languages in 2025:
| Language | Native speakers (millions) | Non-native speakers (millions) | Total speakers (millions) |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | 390 | 1,138 | 1,528 |
| Mandarin Chinese | 990 | 194 | 1,184 |
| Hindi | 345 | 264 | 609 |
| Spanish | 484 | 74 | 558 |
In total, about 18.8% of the world’s population speaks English, but only a quarter of those are native speakers.
Mandarin Chinese ranks second with roughly 1.18 billion speakers. In contrast to English, Mandarin is primarily spoken as a first language, with more than 83% of its speakers being native.
Hindi and Spanish follow as the next most spoken languages worldwide. Hindi has around 609 million speakers, split more evenly between native and non-native usage due to India’s multilingual population.
Spanish stands out as one of the most widely spoken native languages globally, with nearly 87% of its speakers using it as their first language. Spoken Spanish is concentrated across Spain, Latin America, and parts of the United States.
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