The table illustrates some categories of the most popular languages among countries. It also compares the number of people learning the language and those who speak those languages, and shows how many native speakers speak those languages.
Overall, the data shows that English is the most popular language for people to learn worldwide, while Chinese has the largest number of native speakers. Japanese has the lowest figure of people learning this language and is spoken in the fewest countries.
1.5 billion people are learning English compared to 82 million studying French, which is the second most popular language to learn. English is spoken in the highest number of countries, with 101 countries, twice as many as French and three times as many as Chinese. Spanish, Italian, Japanese are spoken in 31, 29, and 25 countries respectively
Chinese is the most spoken language in the number of native speakers, more than 1.39 billion, which is the highest figure among languages. It is the third most popular language to learn with 30 million people. The number of native speakers in Spanish is 389 million people, more than five times compared to Italian, while only 14.5 million people are learning Spanish and 8 million for Italian. The lowest figure of those studying languages is Japanese with 3 million learners.
