What is the most widely spoken language in the world?

Bad question! English is spoken by many millions way beyond American borders.. It is the language of business, airline pilots, and many native speakers of other languages. English is taught in many countries as a second language. You didn't qualify the question as native speakers... we all know China and India have over a trillion native speakers...what would the number be if all the former British empire and second language English speakers were included???

Badly worded question - widely spoken suggests the range of countries

Adrian Pedley, You are right. They only listed the population of the US as English speakers. What about England, Australia, Belize and several African nations where English is the official language, plus all the millions who speak English as a second language? It's a bad question.

the question asked for the most WIDELY use language Not the most used I think Spanish and English are used Most Widely

Hindu is a religion not a language, Hindi is. Similarly there is no Chinese language, there are numerous languages spoken in China, believe Cantonese and Mandarin are the most popular

If you get a bunch of Chinese together and found out that they really couldn't understand each other is it fair to say they are speaking the same language?

The figures are way off. 1. There is no language called "Chinese". Among the approximately 56 ethnic groups in China, there are as many languages and dialects ranging from Mandarin, Cantonese, Tibetan, Mongolian, Xiang, and many more. Each of these languages make up a portion of the 1,197,000,000. 2. The figures for English account for the US alone, discounting the other English speaking nations of the world including Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and others. Together, the English speaking nations total over 500,000,000 speakers using English as a first language, not to mention those who are conversant in English as a second language. I'm sorry to say, Sandra Ziesmer, this submission should be scrapped.

Good thing they didn't give, 'forked tongue' as a choice!

Interesting you use the number for Chinese for all speakers and for English the number of native speakers. Chinese is still first but English is a very close second

Hindu is not a language it's a religion hindi is a language

Considering there are numerous comments on here from at least 7 yrs ago, this question needs updating AND a date stamp!

Sandra Ziesmer ... not a well thought out question and you gave the incorrect answer .

English is spoken by 1,452 billion people in the world . Mandarin 1,118 billion . A very badly phrased question and an incorrect answer given . Chinese has many variants .. not all of which are intelligible to all Chinese .

Bad Question. The most widely spoken language in the world is the language spoken in the most countries across the world and NOT the one that has the most people speaking a language.

they blew this answer.english is the most widely spoken language in the world.also there are many chinese languages.

I assumed widely spoken meant spoken the most.

Player, Hindu isn't a language, its a religion. Hindi is a language

rudreshwar sen, true Hindi is the language

I had to choose between Spanish and English as the most widely spoken, Mandarin Chinese has the most speakers but that wasn't the question

Chinese is not a language the primary language of China is Mandarin. Many languages are spoken in China. We never say India speaks Indian, do we?

Misleading question..

Love this question. Mandarin, specifically.

This question was a tough one for me . I though surely Spanish was the right answer but was surprised to see Chinese was the right one

Even the explanation indicated there is no Chinese language only a bunch of local dialects Boo

thought widely meant throughout the world.