Mandarin Chinese has the most native speakers worldwide in standard Ethnologue rankings.
Mandarin is a group of closely related varieties within the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. It is spoken mainly in China and Taiwan, and it is one of the official languages of Singapore. Standard Chinese, based largely on the Beijing variety, is the official spoken standard in the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan.
Mandarin is written using Chinese characters, and its standard pronunciation is commonly represented with Hanyu Pinyin. The language uses tones, meaning that pitch patterns can distinguish words with otherwise similar sounds. Standard Mandarin is typically described as having four main lexical tones plus a neutral tone.
Rankings can change depending on whether native and second-language speakers are counted together. English has more total speakers when second-language users are included, while Mandarin leads in native-speaker counts. Cantonese and other Chinese varieties are not automatically identical to Mandarin.