What is the world’s most widely spoken first language by number of native speakers?

Mandarin Chinese is the world’s most widely spoken first language by number of native speakers. It has hundreds of millions of native speakers, concentrated mainly in China and Taiwan, with substantial communities elsewhere.

Mandarin is the largest branch of the Sinitic language group. Standard Mandarin, called Putonghua in mainland China and Guoyu in Taiwan, is based largely on the speech of northern China and uses Beijing pronunciation as its phonological model.

Mandarin is written primarily with Chinese characters, which represent morphemes rather than an alphabetic sequence of individual sounds. Standard Mandarin also uses four main tones, plus a neutral tone, so pitch patterns can distinguish otherwise similar syllables.

English is often described as the world’s most widely spoken language when native and second-language speakers are combined. Spanish has more native speakers than English, but Mandarin has more native speakers than any other single language. Rankings can vary slightly depending on how language varieties and bilingual speakers are counted.