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P1The table compares five major languages by the number of native speakers and total speakers (in millions) in 2020.

P2Overall, Mandarin Chinese had the most native speakers by a wide margin, yet English ranked first in total speakers and showed the largest gap between native and total speaker figures of any language in the table.

P3Mandarin Chinese led in native speakers at 920 million, nearly double the figure for Spanish (475 million), which ranked second. English (380 million), Arabic (360 million) and Hindi (345 million) occupied the lower end of the native-speaker range, with differences of less than 40 million separating them.

P4The total-speaker rankings told a markedly different story. English had the highest total at 1,452 million, a figure substantially above Mandarin Chinese's 1,118 million. The gap between English's native and total speaker figures was 1,072 million, by far the largest in the table, reflecting the language's widespread use as a second or international language. Hindi followed with 602 million total speakers, and Spanish with 548 million, while Arabic had the fewest total speakers at 422 million, only 62 million more than its native-speaker count. Mandarin Chinese, despite its native-speaker dominance, had fewer total speakers than English, suggesting that it was less widely adopted as an additional language.