The most widely spoken language in the world by total number of speakers is English.
This ranking counts both native speakers and people who use a language as a second or additional language. English leads because it is taught and used internationally in education, science, aviation, business, tourism, diplomacy, entertainment, and online communication. Its worldwide role expanded through the British Empire and later through the economic, scientific, and cultural influence of the United States.
The result differs from rankings based only on native speakers. Mandarin Chinese has the largest native-speaker population, while English has a much larger second-language population. Estimates vary because surveys define “speaker” differently: some count only fluent users, whereas others include people with limited conversational ability. Language boundaries also complicate comparisons, particularly for Arabic and Chinese varieties.
English is therefore not necessarily the language most people speak first at home. It is the leading global lingua franca—the common language people with different mother tongues use to communicate. Its vocabulary also reflects centuries of contact with French, Latin, Greek, Norse, and many other languages.