Globally English remains stable the most spoken language counting one billion and 109 million people total 17% of the world population; in second place there is Mandarin spoken by one billion and 107 million people total 15% of word population, third place for Hindi-Urdu spoken by 697.4 million people. Completing the ranking are Spanish – 512.9 million speakers – Arabic – 422 millions – French – 284.9 people – Bahasa, Russian, Bengali and Portuguese. Italian is placed at 21st counting 67 million speakers and with an interesting record: thanks to the emigration is the widest mother tongue language spoken in 26 countries in the world.
Lastly as for the mother tongue speakers the ranking changes; the top is taken by Mandarin – 908.7 million of speakers – in succession Spanish – 442.3 m – English with 378.2 m, then Hindi-Urdu, Bengali, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, Javanese and Wu Chinese.