The Most Widely Spoken Language in the World

There are thousands of languages spoken throughout the world, but what is the most widely spoken? This may be more of a quiz question than one of interest to most people, but in business this is actually quite important. In 1999 the Summer Institute for Linguistics Ethnologue Survey gave us a list of the languages in order of the number of people who speak them as their primary language.
Over the centuries the major nations of the world have expanded their empires, and with that, the number of people who speak their language. With the Pilgrims, English became the official language spoken in North America. The Conquistadors adventures to Central and South America meant that Spanish became widely spoken. The French empire spread south through North and West Africa, View the rest of this article