Which language has the greatest number of native speakers in the world?

Mandarin Chinese has the greatest number of native speakers in the world.

Mandarin is a group of closely related Sinitic varieties spoken across northern, southwestern, and central China and in Taiwan. Standard Mandarin is based largely on the Beijing dialect and serves as the official spoken standard of the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan; it is also one of Singapore’s official languages.

The term Mandarin can describe both the broad group of varieties and the standardized language used in education, government, and broadcasting. These varieties can differ considerably, especially in pronunciation and vocabulary, while Standard Mandarin provides a common form for communication.

Mandarin is written mainly with Chinese characters. Standard Mandarin has four principal lexical tones plus a neutral tone, meaning pitch patterns can distinguish words. Mandarin’s large native-speaker population reflects the enormous population of China, rather than a single uniform everyday dialect spoken identically everywhere.