Numbers vary widely — Ethnologue puts the number of native speakers at almost 1.2 billion native speakers, roughly a billion of whom speak Mandarin — but there’s no doubt it’s the most spoken language in the world. If you wish to learn a language that one in six people in the world speak, this is the one for you. Seeing as Chinese is a tonal language that uses thousands of logograms, it will certainly keep you busy.
