Knowledge of several foreign languages is essential today, especially if you work with foreign partners or your hobby requires knowledge of a foreign language. However, learning a language requires a lot of people's hard work and a lot of intellectual resources.
Our advice is to start learning what you like or what you need, because the most important thing in learning a language is motivation, what will make you work and study month after month. If you still can't decide which language to choose, perhaps this list of 10 in-demand languages in the world will help you. Languages are chosen for their global importance (distribution, economic and political influence), ease of learning and usefulness for the individual (for example, when traveling or when applying for a job).
1. Of course, no options. It is the most sought-after language in the world, the world's lingua franca, which is spoken by people from different countries in order to understand each other (even if English is not native to the participants in communication). English is understood to some extent by about 1/3 of the world's population. Almost all international business, academic and diplomatic negotiations are conducted in the language of Shakespeare. In many European countries today, English is essential for getting a good job. Fortunately, English is quite easy to learn.
2. - by some estimates, it is in second place in demand, at least for Americans. It makes it easier to communicate with Spanish-speaking people in North America (especially in the south), in addition, knowing the language will make traveling in Spain or Latin America much more interesting. It is the working language of the UN. And most importantly, this language of Borges, Cervantes and 700 million other people is one of the easiest languages to learn!
3. . It is likely that in the near future China will be the new world superpower. It is home to 1.3 billion people, a developed economy and a multi-thousand-year cultural heritage. Chinese is the working language of the UN. If you choose from Chinese dialects, then stop at Mandarin: this is the official language of the country and prevails in most of China. Speaking Chinese is relatively easy (especially once you get the pitches right, which are very important for understanding meaning). The grammar is also simple. But hieroglyphic writing is a nightmare, even many Chinese cannot fully cope with it.
4. also belongs to the most popular languages in the world. It is spoken by about 250 million people in Eurasia (including many older people in Eastern Europe). A huge amount of scientific and technical materials were written in Russian, in addition, Russian is the language of literature, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky. Russia is one of the world's energy and economic powers. Russian is one of the working languages of the UN. It is quite difficult to learn, its grammar is complex but logical. Russian can be called one of the simple "complex" languages.
5. Arabic. It is spoken by about 400 million people, the Koran is written on it. Recently, Arabic has become of great importance for world negotiations related to energy or security. People who know Arabic are in demand in the labor market today, they receive good salaries. Another question is how long this situation will continue. Arabic is one of the working languages of the UN. Of course, the grammar and writing of Arabic is very difficult, it will probably be the third most difficult language in this list of popular languages of the world (after Chinese and Japanese). Another disadvantage is that there are many dialects of Arabic that differ significantly from each other.
6. is of great historical importance, because it was the lingua franca in Europe before English. Even today it is the second most demanded world language, it is spoken at the native level by 130 million people. Half of them live in France, the rest in West Africa and the Maghreb. French is important in the European Union, whose capital is French-speaking Brussels. In North America, French is used in Quebec and some southern areas. But with all this, if you are not a diplomat, not an employee of the European Union and not an existentialist philosopher, French will be less important to you than it was 50 years ago. But it is relatively simple and similar to English.
7. Portuguese is becoming increasingly important due to the development of Brazil and its emergence as a global economic and resource power. If you are learning Portuguese, you will stand out from the Spanish learners. Portuguese is spoken by 200 million people. The language is somewhat more difficult than Spanish, but not more difficult than English or French.
8. Japanese. Japan continues to be an important economic power in the world. Japanese is spoken by 130 million people. It is a very complex language with difficult grammar and an abundance of grammatical forms depending on the gender and social status of the participants in the conversation. Funnily enough, it's quite common for Japanese girls to hang out with foreign male language learners. Sometimes this leads to the fact that these "unfortunate" men begin to talk like girls.
9. . It is spoken by about 100 million people and is the language of Turkey, an important country in the Middle East. It is quite simple (which is why it ended up on the list of the most popular languages in the world).
ten. . A language in demand in Europe and among those interested in the history of the 20th century. German is used in business communication (Germany has a significant economic impact on the countries of the Eurozone). Most young Germans today know English, the country's population is decreasing: it is likely that German will continue to lose ground. The language is similar to English in terms of learning difficulty, although its grammar is more difficult.
Here are a few more popular and important languages of the world that are not included in the list of the 10 most popular languages:
Korean. Quite important, but has limited growth potential. Also, almost as complex as Japanese or Chinese. Only 70 million speakers.
Italian and Polish are two other "major" European languages, but do not have much international significance.
Hindi would make the list as it is the official language of India. Unfortunately, in practice, it turns out that most Hindus use local dialects or English to communicate.
Farsi is essential for specialists in the Near and Middle East.
To date, about 6,000 languages are known, but most of the world's population speaks approximately 150 languages. The rest are dead languages that practically no one speaks, which have been preserved in the form of letters and historical texts stored in libraries or artificially cultivated in a certain circle of people. The most interesting 45% of the world's population speaks the 10 most popular languages, the rest are gradually falling into disuse, becoming part of history. Meet the 10 most popular languages on earth.
10 Punjabi
Punjabi is the native language of nearly 110 million people living on the India-Pakistan border and can also be found in English-speaking countries in Europe and America.
9. Japanese
Japanese is probably the most "polite" language in the world, with 127 million native speakers. There are special speech patterns for politely addressing people, depending on the status and position in society. Sometimes it seems that the Japanese speak completely different languages, depending on who they turn to older people and authorities or scolding a child running around the street. The Japanese language is incredibly difficult to learn due to the writing of words in hieroglyphs.
8. Russian
Russian is the most popular language among the Slavic group, which is native to 160 million people. It is difficult for most people to learn it because of the Cyrillic alphabet, genders, cases and endings.
7. Bengali
I think that before that you had heard a little about the Bengali language and, moreover, you had never seen the cunning ligature of letters. However, it is spoken by more than 205 million people in Bangladesh and a number of Indian provinces.
6. Portuguese
The great colonial past allowed the Portuguese language to become one of the most popular in the world, which is considered native to 215 million people. Portuguese speakers can be found in Europe, South America and a number of African countries.
5. Arabic
The Arabic literary language is considered native by 295 million people on earth, which is used in news releases and at official ceremonies. Most of the inhabitants of the Arab countries speak local dialects, and if they were counted separately, then the Arabic language would be far from the top ten most common languages in the world, but fortunately, the leadership of the Arab countries makes a lot of efforts so that the differences in the dialects of different regions are minimal .
4. English
Surprisingly, in fourth place was English, which is considered their mother tongue by 360 million people. But English is the language of international communication, in which negotiations are conducted, businessmen communicate, plus just a huge number of films and TV shows are shot.
3. Spanish
You will be joyfully greeted with the cry of "Hola" by 470 million people on earth who consider Spanish as their native language, and this is no less, almost 5.85% of the world's population, mainly living in South America. By the way, for many Americans, Spanish is a second language. Moreover, every year the number of people who speak Spanish only increases, which is very easy to learn.
2. Hindi
There are over 122 languages in India, of which 22 are official languages that officials can use for record keeping. The most common in the second most populous country in the world is Hindi, which is considered native by about 480 million people, and most of the country's population, if not speaking, then understands.
1. Chinese
Of the 6.6 billion people living on earth, approximately 14.1% speak Chinese. Although there are many dialects of the Chinese language, Mandarin is the predominant dialect, which is the native language of 955 million Chinese.
Have you ever wondered which languages are the most widely spoken in the world?
If I were asked about it, I would put Chinese first. After all, there are the most Chinese on our planet. Learn Chinese - and you can freely communicate with every fifth inhabitant of the planet. The only pity is that they often live somewhere far away, and I don’t know what to talk about with the Chinese. Using the same principle, I would give the second place to the second most populous country - India with its billion Hindus. What language do they have there? Hindi? Although I have never come across inscriptions in Hindi, but this billion must somehow communicate with each other. Then comes the turn of the universal and ubiquitous English. He is in third place. Was it in vain that they taught him at school?! Then, probably, comes Spanish, because in addition to Spain, it is also spoken by almost all of Central and South America. Well, the fifth place should definitely be occupied by our, Russian, great and mighty. Although it is spoken only in our country, but after all, we seem to be the largest state in the world, as we were taught while we consisted of 15 republics, and now they assure us after all the republics fled from us. Again, Russian is one of the official languages of the UN.
Well, after these five, probably, German, which is spoken by half of Europe, and French, the language of diplomats, which, in addition to France and Belgium, is spoken by another half of such a large country as Canada, should probably follow. Some Kazakh language should also get into the top ten, since almost all of our Central Asian republics speak it with slight differences. And don't forget Africa. What are they talking about? "Who can tell them in the dark?" It seems that there is some kind of Afrikaans language? So let him also have a place in the top ten. It seems to be logical?
In fact, the places in the prevalence table are distributed somewhat differently:
1. Chinese - the first place is guessed correctly. It is also the official language of Thailand and Singapore. Good to know. But there are so many dialects in Chinese and they are so different from each other that the inhabitants of two neighboring villages can absolutely not understand each other until they take up the hieroglyphs.
2. Arabic - an unexpected surprise! We forgot about Arabic. Another official language of the UN, and in addition, having official status in Egypt, Algeria, Israel, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Kuwait, Yemen, Jordan, Mauritania, Morocco, Syria, Sudan, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Somalia and many others countries.
3. Hindi -- continue until all according to the assumption
4. English
5. spanish
6. Bengali -- oops! Another language of India and the official language of Bangladesh, which was still part of India not so long ago. Numerous Indians do not want to be content with just third place.
7. Portuguese -- another surprise! In addition to little Portugal, as many people know, it is also the official language of Brazil (5th place in the world in terms of population), and, as few people know, Angola, Mozambique, and several other African countries.
8. Russian - our "great and mighty" is only in 8th place.
9. Japanese - oh, we forgot about the small but densely populated Japan, only slightly inferior to Russia in terms of the number of inhabitants.
10. German - the turn has come to him. In addition to Germany, it has official status in Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg and Liechtenstein.
11. french
12. Korean - who would have thought!
13. Javanese - and this language does not have the status of a state language at all, although it is spoken by most of the inhabitants of Indonesia, the 4th state in the world in terms of population. The official language of Indonesia is Indonesian, one of the easiest languages to learn, but not even in the top thirty of the most common.
14. Telugu -- have you heard of this? The official language of one of the states of India is also common in Sri Lanka.
15. Marathi -- Hindus don't give up! Official language of several Indian states.
16. Vietnamese
17. Tamil is another gift from the Indian people. The official language of the Indian state of Tamiland, as well as Sri Lanka and Singapore. We also got the word "catamaran" from this language, which literally means "tied logs".
18. Italian is the language of Italy, the Vatican, Switzerland and San Marina, one of the six official languages of the UN.
19. Turkish -- the language of Turkey and Cyprus
20. Urdu - it is spoken by 7 percent of the population of Pakistan, as well as the population of several other Indian states, where it has official status.
Further after this twenty places are distributed as follows: Punjabi (India), Ukrainian, Gujarati (India), Thai (Thailand), Polish, Malayalam (India), Kannada (India), Oriya (India), Burmese (Burma, which is now called Myanmar), Azerbaijani, Farsi (aka Persian, the language of Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan), Sundanese (Indonesia), Pashto (Afghanistan), Romanian (Romania, Moldova), Bhojpuri (India, Nepal).
Pay attention, among the 35 most common languages of the world there is no Afrikaans (it, by the way, is very similar to Portuguese) or Kazakh, not a single Scandinavian language, there is no Yiddish with Hebrew, Tatar, Czech, Hungarian, which we meet quite often, but there is a kind half of the 23 official languages of India.
Here is another interesting table. Tellingly, the number of websites in Russian is the second in the world. The first and undisputed leader is of course English.
According to various estimates, there are up to 7,000 languages in the world, but only a few dozen of them are of world significance or are used officially. Below is a table of the world's major languages with data on the number of speakers, the number of countries in which the language is official, the percentage of websites that use these languages, as well as the total contribution of native speakers to world GDP.
The world's population speaks almost 7,000 languages. However, only a few dozen of them have official status in certain countries and global significance. For example, the UN has only 6 official languages: English, Arabic, Russian, French, Chinese and Spanish.
Today we have compiled for you Top 15 most spoken languages in the world. The main criterion for assessing the prevalence was the number of people who consider a particular language as their mother tongue.
Native to 60.6 million people.
The language related to Hindi belongs to the Indo-European group and originated in the 13th century. Urdu is spoken by about 7 percent of the population of Pakistan and the population of several Indian states, as well as a few nationalities in 23 countries of the world.
14. Italian
Native to 61.7 million people.
The language is official in Italy, Switzerland, the Vatican and San Marino. About 2% of websites on the Internet use Italian.
13. Tamil
Native to 65.7 million people.
The language of the population of southern India, parts of Singapore and Sri Lanka. The Tamil language originated over 2,300 years ago and is the language in which many of the classic literary works of the literature of the East are written.
12. Korean
Native to 66.3 million people.
The language is official in North and South Korea, it is spoken by peoples in 33 countries around the world.
11. French
Native to 67.8 million people.
The language is official in France, Belgium, Canada, Switzerland, Monaco and Luxembourg. International Organization for Cooperation of Francophone Countries Francophonie unites 56 states.
10. German
Native to 90.3 million people.
The language is official in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg and Belgium. German is the second most popular language on the Internet - 6.5% of websites are written in it.
9. Japanese
Native to 122 million people.
Despite the fact that Japanese is the official language of only one state, it is used by the peoples of 25 different countries in Asia. The importance of the Japanese language is increased by the fact that Japan is the world's fourth largest power in terms of GDP.
8. Russian
Native to 144 million people.
The Russian language is used for communication by people in 33 countries of the world, including in 7 of them the language has official status. 4.8% of sites on the Internet use the Russian language.
7. Portuguese
Native to 178 million people.
Colonization contributed to the spread of the native language for the population of small Portugal. Portuguese is the second most spoken language in Latin America. It is also official in a number of African countries, for example, in Mozambique and Angola.
6. Bengali
Native to 181 million people.
The Indo-European language, which originated in the 10th-12th centuries, is the official language in the Republic of Bangladesh and is widely used in India.
5. Hindi
Native to 182 million people.
This ancient language is the most widely spoken in India and is enshrined in the country's constitution as an official language along with 20 other languages.
4. Arabic
Native to 221 million people.
The language has official status in Egypt, Israel, Algeria, Iraq, Libya, Lebanon, Kuwait, Jordan, Yemen, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Senegal and many other countries.
3. Spanish
Native to 329 million people.
The language is official in Spain, many countries in Latin America and Equatorial Guinea. About 4.5% of websites on the Internet use Spanish.
2. English
Native to 560 million people.
One of the most widely spoken languages in the world is recognized as official in 59 countries. Almost 57% of websites on the World Wide Web are written in English. Interestingly, about 70% of the words in the language are borrowed.
1. Chinese
Native to 1213 million people.
The most spoken language in the world is official in China, Taiwan and Singapore. 4.5% of Internet websites are written in Chinese. There are 10 dialect groups in the Chinese language, and the dialects differ so much from each other that it is sometimes impossible for residents of different regions of China to understand each other.
Human speech skills have evolved over many centuries. Until now, there is no reliable data that reveal the secrets of the emergence of speech communications. Language statistics show that some types of speech have long disappeared, while others are actively spreading and becoming in demand.
History of occurrence
The role of languages in the world is very great. They help people communicate. Today, more than 6 thousand types of speech are known. However, no one can say exactly how they appeared.
There are many theories about the origin of speech communications. Some believe that everything happened as a result of evolution. Others believe that such a skill was given by God. However, the available theories do not provide exhaustive answers to the questions. For example, evolutionists cannot explain how the simplification of speech communications occurred. After all, the most ancient languages (Latin, Sanskrit) are much more complicated than modern ones.
Such regularity contradicts the principles of the theory of biological evolution. The modern science of the languages of the world, among the various versions, most accepts the theory of gestures. According to scientists, people constantly developed and improved the sign system. Gestures began to be used, sounds were added in the process. However, the vocabulary was not rich.
So, there are many versions - from creation by God to a sudden appearance. Each of them has the right to exist. But no one knows exactly what contributed to the spread of languages in the world.
Number of media
The statistics of languages has 6-7 thousand types of speech. Many of them are spoken by only a small part. Scientists classify types of speech into groups according to their characteristics. The similarity of languages implies the same sound, similar words. One of the main ones is the genealogical group.
The number of languages in the world is constantly decreasing. On average, one species disappears every two weeks. As a result, the number of forgotten languages is gradually increasing. What are the statistics of languages in the world? There are 80 languages for 80% of the world's population. The rest is distributed among the remaining inhabitants of the planet.
The uneven distribution of speech types among - threatens with complete disappearance. According to UNESCO, 50 types of speech are under threat in Europe alone. Globalization also contributes to the decline.
Most populous area by number of speakers different types speech - Papua (New Guinea). Many tribes live here. At the same time, the territory of the region is smaller in area than Ukraine. About 6 million people live in Papua. The statistics of languages has from 800 to 1000 dialects common among the tribes.
The most common
The most widespread is:
- Chinese- ranks first in the TOP-10, as it is used by 1.3 billion people in 35 countries. The Chinese language is one of the most ancient in the world. It has 85,568 characters. It is also considered the most difficult language in the world.
- English- the second most common. It is official in the UK, India, Canada, Ireland. It is in 1st place among the most popular languages in the world. It is used by about 600 million people in 106 countries. In terms of the number of words, he is also in the lead - 490 thousand. However, a person's vocabulary is no more than 60 thousand words. Knowledge of English in the modern world helps many to get a well-paid job. International business is also conducted on it.
- Hindi- takes the third place. Language statistics has 490 million native speakers in 4 countries.
- Spanish– the language is used in 31 countries. It is considered official in the European Union, the UN. Spanish is the easiest language in the world. It is spoken by about 437 million people.
- Arab– it is used by 290 million people in 58 countries. The Arabic language is rapidly spreading in the world thanks to the Quran. Until 1924, the Arabic alphabet was used in Kabardian. Today, its carriers are especially in demand on. Most energy negotiations do not get around this type of speech.
- Russian- the most popular in Russia and Europe. It is used by about 270 million people in 17 countries.
French is ranked 10th in the world. The number of speakers is 150 million people in 53 countries. It is also considered one of the most beautiful. The list shows how many languages are spoken in the world most of all.
Separate languages spread and become in demand in different countries of the world. The main factors are political and economic influence, as well as ease of study. So they gradually become the international languages of the world. The graph shows what type of speech websites use on the Internet:
State standards
Among the official languages of the world, English occupies the first place. Official languages in other countries of the world:
The most ancient dialects
It is technically impossible to single out the most ancient of the existing languages of the world. They were used long before writing appeared on earth. List of the most ancient languages of the world (some are no longer used):
However, some scientists claim that the Pramir language is the founder of other types of speech on planet earth. Many have long gone out of use and exist only according to written monuments. They are called the dead languages of the world.
Latin, although not included in this list, is also one of the most ancient. The Latin language has a large number of fans in the world. They are trying to introduce the method of teaching Latin in different countries. As a result, its popularity is not decreasing.
From complex to simple
Many foreign languages come easily to people. However, studying other species requires a lot of effort and time. Sometimes it may take several years. 10 most difficult types of speech։
- Basque- the dictionary contains about 500 thousand words. Due to its complexity, it was used by US cipher radio operators during the .
- Navajo- it is unique in that, in addition to vowels / consonants, it has 4 more tones (high, low, ascending, descending). As one of the most difficult types of speech, it was also used during.
- Tabasaran- one of the current state languages of Dagestan. He is listed in the Guinness Book of Records.
- Eskimo(Wikipedia - Eskimo. ᐃᓄᐃᑦ) - as such, linguists do not distinguish. It provides 63 forms of the present tense. Apparently this applies to the entire Eskimo branch.
- Chippewa belongs to the Chippewa Indians. Has 6 thousand verb forms.
- Chinese- in order for a person to be able to read at least a little, it is necessary to learn how to draw 1500 hieroglyphs out of 85568.
- Finnish- has 15 cases and more than 100 conjugations. Verbs are also inflected like a noun. However, it is easy to pronounce.
- Kosinsky- there is a threat of complete extinction. It is spoken by 370,000 people in southern Africa.
- Abkhazian- In 1862, an alphabet based on the Cyrillic alphabet was created. It is also used in Turkey.
- Bale- it is used by the inhabitants of the Amazon basin. Here one word sometimes means a whole phrase.
Of the union republics of the USSR, Kazakh, Armenian, Russian and Persian can be called complex.
The statistics of studying foreign languages in the world shows that Spanish, English, French and Italian are among the most popular. At the same time, after English, German is often studied. It is commonly used in business communication. Among the studied languages of the world, Russian is also recommended.
Turkish is also included in the list of the world's easiest languages. One of the new types of speech was Esperanto. It was created by the Warsaw ophthalmologist Lazar Markovich in 1887.
Unusual types of speech
Gestures are among the most unusual languages in the world. They are mostly used by people who are hard of hearing. In Iceland, sign language is official. Language statistics show that there are several types of such speech. For example, American and English are very different from each other.
There are also funny languages of the world. For example, chalkatongo-mixtek. There is no difference between interrogative and affirmative sentences. The peculiarity of the berik (Papuan) is that when they say something, it is imperative to indicate where and when they did it. The phrase "I was in the store" in lordly will be "I was in the store after lunch."
What is the place of the Russian
Russian is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world. It is also used as a working one - by the UN, UNESCO. It is included in the list of the richest languages in the world. However, not all native speakers use Russian words correctly.
This language is spoken in 17 countries of the world. It is considered state for Russians, Belarusians, Kirghiz, as well as residents of Ingushetia. In Kyrgyzstan, the language is used by about 48% of the population. Most of the technical terms in Ingush are borrowed from Russian. It, along with the Chechen language, is widespread in the North Caucasus. It ranks sixth in terms of the number of speakers.
What are the statistics of the Russian language in the world? There are about 270 million people who speak it. Of these, 137.5 million speakers live in Russia.
They also know Russian well - in Ukraine and Latvia. Language statistics show that 92% of Ukrainians and 81.2% of Lithuanians are fluent in Russian. Interesting Facts:
- The alphabet is similar to the Latin version.
- It has a word with three letters "E" - long neck.
- The English, to learn in Russian "I love you" use the phrase in English Yellow-blue bus.
- Originally Russian words beginning with the letter "A" do not exist.
The great importance of the Russian language in the world lies not only in its wide distribution. It also applies to international relations. Great literary works make the Russian language even more popular in the world. This contributes to the spread of the culture of the Russian people.
Study Methods
What is the best language in the world? No one can give a definite answer. Language statistics highlights only the most popular of them. One of the most popular is English.
There are also different methods for studying them. You can study with a teacher or study on your own. The main thing is to practice every day. There are many that provide the necessary training materials. Audio courses are also sold to help solve pronunciation problems. And by country it will only consolidate the knowledge gained.
