The table below gives information about languages with the most native speakers.

The table compares the six most widely spoken languages in terms of native speakers and the number of people using them as an additional language.

Overall, Mandarin Chinese has the largest native-speaking population, while English is by far the most popular second language. In contrast, Portuguese records the smallest figures for both categories.

Mandarin Chinese has 900 million native speakers, with a total of 1.09 billion users worldwide. However, only 190 million speak it as a second language. In contrast, English is spoken by 339 million native speakers but has an exceptionally high number of non-native speakers—603 million—bringing its total to 942 million.

Hindi and Spanish have comparable native speaker populations, at 370 million and 350 million, respectively. Nevertheless, Hindi attracts more second-language speakers (120 million) than Spanish (70 million). Arabic and Portuguese are spoken by similar numbers of native speakers, 203 million and 206 million, respectively, yet very few people use them as additional languages, at just 24 million and 10 million.