If you know that China has the world's largest population, you would know that Chinese would have to rank number 1 among spoken languages. It makes sense that Spanish ranks 2nd because most of the populations in Central America and South America speak Spanish, of course so does the population of Spain. Additionally, there are a number of Spanish-speaking people in the United States. English only ranks third because it is widely spoken, and this data source took into consideration 2nd languages as well.
Chinese* (937,132,000)
Spanish (332,000,000)
English (322,000,000)
Bengali (189,000,000)
Hindi/Urdu (182,000,000)
Arabic* (174,950,000)
Portuguese (170,000,000)
Russian (170,000,000)
Japanese (125,000,000)
German (98,000,000)
French* (79,572,000)
If you know that China has the world's largest population, you would know that Chinese would have to rank number 1 among spoken languages. It makes sense that Spanish ranks 2nd because most of the populations in Central America and South America speak Spanish, of course so does the population of Spain. Additionally, there are a number of Spanish-speaking people in the United States. English only ranks third because it is widely spoken, and this data source took into consideration 2nd languages as well.
Chinese* (937,132,000)
Spanish (332,000,000)
English (322,000,000)
Bengali (189,000,000)
Hindi/Urdu (182,000,000)
Arabic* (174,950,000)
Portuguese (170,000,000)
Russian (170,000,000)
Japanese (125,000,000)
German (98,000,000)
French* (79,572,000)
Source:
http://www2.ignatius.edu/faculty/turner/languages.htm
(This website has various rankings of spoken languages based on different criteria.)