Where Did Modern Day Languages Come From

How many languages would you guess are spoken across the world? 100? 500? 1,000? …. Not even close! There are a whopping 7,000 languages that are still used today. But where did all these languages come from? And which ones are the most commonly spoken?

Explore the lineage of your native language, and many others, in this chart that shares the 100 most-spoken languages in the world. It takes a deep dive into the roots of each of these 100 languages, and you may be surprised to see which languages share the same ones.

As an English speaker I found it surprising that my own language was so closely related to German, Dutch, Swedish, and even Afrikaans! All of these languages share a common ancestor: the ancient language of Germanic.

This chart also shares the total number of speakers of each of the 100 languages, as well as the number of native speakers for each. English snagged the #1 spot with 1,132,366,680 total speakers and 379,007,140 native speakers. That means out of the 7.76 billion people on this planet, 15% of them can speak English. Which may not seem like a huge amount but when you’re comparing it to 99 other languages that 15% makes up a huge portion!

Let’s see which languages made the top 5 list for total speakers:

The Top 5 Languages in the World by Total Speakers

1. English: 1,132,366,680 total speakers
2. Mandarin Chinese: 1,116,596,640 total speakers
3. Hindi: 615,475,540 total speakers
4. Spanish: 534,335,730 total speakers
5. French: 279,821,930 total speakers

And which made the top 5 list for native speakers:

The Top 5 Languages in the World by Native Speakers

1. Mandarin Chinese: 917,868,640 native speakers
2. Spanish: 460,093,030 native speakers
3. English: 379,007,140 native speakers
4. Hindi: 341,208,640 native speakers
5. Bengali: 228,289,600 native speakers

Below is the complete list of rankings, as well as the language origin trees. For a version that’s easier to read, click here.