Of the languages spoken by significant populations, which is the most common?
363358
English.  I feel the United States is a very influential country and for the most part English is spoken, so most other country learn to speak English.
632422
Most informed lists include between 4000 and 8000 languages.  6000 seems to be about the average.  If you took those languages and divided them equally among 6 people, one of them would live in the Americas, one of them would live in Europe and Asia combined, two of them would live in Africa, one of them would live on the island of New Guinea, and the other one would live on all the other islands of the Pacific and Asia.
728104
Spanish, english, French, some German
581986
Well the UN officially recognises exactly 200 countries. However there are several which claim independance, but are not recognised, ir Chechnya, Kashmir, Western Sahara etc Also there are more countries which exist as parts of Unions or Federations, and so are only counted once, ie England, Scotland, Wales & N.Ireland are all counted as the UK. \nAs for language's. There are over 7000 according to the Ethnologue, although UN statistics suggest the number is closer to 3,500 that are in common use, although with globalisation there is apparently a language extinction every 20 days or so at present! Although is seems a large number the vast majority or people upon the Earth speak one of the top 50 most common. The top 10 are:\n1 Chinese (Mandarin) 1,000,000,000 + \n2 English 508,000,000 \n3 Hindustani (Hindi and Urdu) 497,000,000 \n4 Spanish 392,000,000 \n5 Russian 277,000,000 \n6 Arabic 246,000,000 \n7 Bengali 211,000,000 \n8 Portuguese 191,000,000 \n9 Malay-Indonesian 159,000,000 \n10 French 129,000,000
334400
The answer may come as a surprise. Depending on one's definition, estimates range from at least 4,000 languages to 6,000. Either way, this is still quite a large number. One obvious fact is that languages vary greatly in size. We go all the way from English and Spanish with hundreds of millions of speakers around the world - even more if we count all those who use one of these regularly as a second language - down to small languages spoken by a few thousand or a few hundred people. Many go down lower than this: some languages are spoken natively by only a couple dozen or so people, and languages like this soon go down to a single speaker and disappear forever (extinction of languages is the topic of
988973
1 English,\n2 Spanish, and\n3 Chinese\nare the most spoken, but the most taught in school are:\n1 English,\n2 Spanish, and\n3 French
40628
From the site -\nThe Summer Institute for Linguistics (SIL) Ethnologue Survey (1999) lists the following as the top languages by population:\n(number of native speakers in parentheses)\n\n   1. Chinese* (937,132,000)\n   2. Spanish (332,000,000)\n   3. English (322,000,000)\n   4. Bengali (189,000,000)\n   5. Hindi/Urdu (182,000,000)\n   6. Arabic* (174,950,000)\n   7. Portuguese (170,000,000)\n   8. Russian (170,000,000)\n   9. Japanese (125,000,000)\n  10. German (98,000,000)\n  11. French* (79,572,000)\n\n* The totals given for Chinese, Arabic, and French include more than one SIL variety.  See chart for full details.\n\nThe following list is from Dr. Bernard Comrie’s article for the Encarta Encyclopedia (1998):\n(number of native speakers in parentheses)\n\n   1. Mandarin Chinese (836 million)\n   2. Hindi (333 million)\n   3. Spanish (332 million)\n   4. English (322 million)\n   5. Bengali (189 million)\n   6. Arabic (186 million)\n   7. Russian (170 million)\n   8. Portuguese (170 million)\n   9. Japanese (125 million)\n  10. German (98 million)\n  11. French (72 million)\n\nThe following list is from George Weber’s article “Top Languages: The World’s 10 Most Influential Languages” in Language Today (Vol. 2, Dec 1997):\n(number of native speakers in parentheses)\n\n   1. Mandarin Chinese (1.1 billion)\n   2. English (330 million)\n   3. Spanish (300 million)\n   4. Hindi/Urdu (250 million)\n   5. Arabic (200 million)\n   6. Bengali (185 million)\n   7. Portuguese (160 million)\n   8. Russian (160 million)\n   9. Japanese (125 million)\n  10. German (100 million)\n  11. Punjabi (90 million)\n  12. Javanese (80 million)\n  13. French (75 million)\n\nHowever, in terms of secondary speakers, Weber submits the following list:\n(number of speakers in parentheses)\n\n   1. French (190 million)\n   2. English (150 million)\n   3. Russian (125 million)\n   4. Portuguese (28 million)\n   5. Arabic (21 million)\n   6. Spanish (20 million)\n   7. Chinese (20 million)\n   8. German (9 million)\n   9. Japanese (8 million)\n\nThus, if you add the secondary speaker populations to the primary speaker populations, you get the following (and I believe more accurate) list:\n(number of speakers in parentheses)\n\n   1. Mandarin Chinese (1.12 billion)\n   2. English (480 million)\n   3. Spanish (320 million)\n   4. Russian (285 million)\n   5. French (265 million)\n   6. Hindi/Urdu (250 million)\n   7. Arabic (221 million)\n   8. Portuguese (188 million)\n   9. Bengali (185 million)\n  10. Japanese (133 million)\n  11. German (109 million)\n\nThe following is a list of these languages in terms of the number of countries where each is spoken.  The number that follows is the total number of countries that use that language (from Weber, 1997):\n\n   1. English (115)\n   2. French (35)\n   3. Arabic (24)\n   4. Spanish (20)\n   5. Russian (16)\n   6. German (9)\n   7. Mandarin (5)\n   8. Portuguese (5)\n   9. Hindi/Urdu (2)\n  10. Bengali (1)\n  11. Japanese (1)\n\nThe number of countries includes core countries (where the language has full legal or official status), outer core countries (where the language has some legal or official status and is an influential minority language, such as English in India or French in Algeria), and fringe countries (where the language has no legal status, but is an influential minority language in trade, tourism, and the preferred foreign language of the young, such as English in Japan or French in Romania).  For a complete breakdown of each and an accompanying chart, click here.\n\nAfter weighing six factors (number of primary speakers, number of secondary speakers, number and population of countries where used, number of major fields using the language internationally, economic power of countries using the languages, and socio-literary prestige), Weber compiled the following list of the world's ten most influential languages:\n(number of points given in parentheses)\n\n   1. English (37)\n   2. F
71287
The most widely spoken languages in the world.\n\n1. Manderin\n2. English\n3. Hindi\n4. Spanish\n5. Russian
448066
Arabic, French and Spanish.\nNon English speakers are vey much interested inEnglish.
551325
Hebrew, French, Italian, and Chinese.  Cuz those are the only languages that are major that I dont know.
980628
Romania is the official language, which would be the most commonly spoken language in Romania.
1116657
Russian at 5th place\nRussia's vast geographic reach and populous nation makes it sit at number 5 with 275 million speakers. But given the low life expectancy among men there and Arabic's accelerated growth, Russia looks like it will slip in ranking over the next decade.\n\nNumber 4\n\nSpanish\nWith anywhere from 350 to 400 million speakers, many lists have Spanish surpassing English, and by most standards, that is right. The official language in just over 20 nations including Andorra, Belize, Colombia, Cuba, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Spain, U.S., and Venezuela, Spanish weighs in at numero cuatro .\n\nNumber 3\n\nEnglish\nThe "lowest common denominator," if one were to exist, English is the universal language with 500 million speakers worldwide. The language is officially spoken in over 50 countries, a record. Examples include: Australia, Brunei, Cameroon, Canada, Fiji, New Zealand, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, South Africa, U.K., and U.S., not to mention many Caribbean states.\n\nNumber 2\n\nHindi/Urdu\nIronically, Hindi and Urdu are essentially the same language. In Pakistan, Hindi is modified and written in Arabic script, whereas in India, it is written in the Devanagari script and called Hindi. Combined, 600 million human beings speak Hindi. While every expert would assert that India's population will surpass China's, chances are that there will always be more Mandarin-speaking people because English is widely spoken in India, but not in China.\n\nNumber 1\n\nMandarin Chinese\nMandarin is spoken by over 1 billion people; making it the most widely spoken language on Earth. Besides China, Mandarin is spoken in Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mongolia, Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, Taiwan, and Thailand. Mandarin is fairly sophisticated because it can be spoken in four tones. But once you begin, you'll have a billion people to chat with... \nIt is interesting to note that both German and Japanese are spoken by over 100 million people as well, but failed to register on the Top 10 list.\n\nResources:\nwww.infoplease.com/ipa/A0774735.html\nwww.soyouwanna.com/site/toptens/languages/languages.html\nTop 10 of Everything 2002, by Russell Ash
142521
eengluss <broken english>, because THAT is the most common language in the world.
89478
"German (official) 63.7%, French (official) 20.4%, Italian (official) 6.5%, Serbo-Croatian 1.5%, Albanian 1.3%, Portuguese 1.2%, Spanish 1.1%, English 1%, Romansch 0.5%, other 2.8% (2000 census)\nnote: German, French, Italian, and Romansch are all national languages, but only the first three are official languages"\n\nDont quote me on those figures, they come from the CIA LOL
295608
Most people outside of America speaks more than 1 language. Personally, I speak, read, and write 4 different languages.
624672
Not many people. People still learn and speak it in some places though.
133968
The following are the Scheduled languages ordered by number of speakers as first language[1]:\n\nHindi: 337 million \nBengali: 70 million \nTelugu: 66 million (Dravidian) \nMarathi: 63 million \nTamil: 53 million (Dravidian)(Classical language) \nUrdu: 43 million \nGujarati: 41 million \nKannada: 33 million (Dravidian) \nMalayalam: 30 million (Dravidian) \nOriya: 28 million \nPunjabi: 23 million \nBhojpuri: 23 million \nAssamese: 13 million \nMaithili: 8 million \nSindhi : 2.1 Million \nKonkani: 1.7 Million \nManipuri : 1.2 Million \nNepali : 1 Million \nSanskrit: 0.5 million \nKashmiri: 0.5 million \n[edit]\nOther significant languages\nEnglish \nTamil (classical) \nSanskrit (classical) \nWagdi \nMarwari: 12 million \nChhattisgarhi: 11 million \nMagahi: 11 million \nAwadhi: 0.5 million \nTulu: 6 Million (Dravidian) \nKodava (Dravidian) \nDogri \nFrench \nPortuguese \nBodo \nSanthali \nSikkimese \nDzongkha - Tibetan \nDakkhini (also known as Deccani): 11 million \n\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Indian_languages_by_total_speakers\n\nYou figure out the 16 main. Whew!