I've seen this recently and think that this can make a little bit surprise of some.
Language is perhaps the most important function of the human body – it allows us to get sustenance as a child, it allows us to get virtually anything we want as an adult, and it allows us many hours of entertainment through literature, radio, music, and films. This list (in order of least to most spoken) summarizes the most important languages in use today.
10. French - Number of speakers: 129 million
9. Malay-Indonesian - Number of speakers: 159 million
8. Portuguese - Number of speakers: 191 million
7. Bengali - Number of speakers: 211 million
6. Arabic - Number of speakers: 246 million
5. Russian - Number of speakers: 277 million
4. Spanish - Number of speakers: 392 million
3. Hindustani - Number of speakers: 497 million
2. English - Number of speakers: 508 million
1. Mandarin - Number of speakers: 1 billion+
Source: http://listverse.com/2008/06/26/top-10-most-spoken-languages-in-the-world/
There are at least 7,102 known languages alive in the world today. Twenty-three of these languages are a mother tongue for more than 50 million people. The 23 languages make up the native tongue of 4.1 billion people. We represent each language within black borders and then provide the numbers of native speakers (in millions) by country. The colour of these countries shows how languages have taken root in many different regions.
https://cdn3.scmp.com/sites/default/files/2015/05/27/languages.png
