The world has a population of around eight billion people. It is estimated that up to 7,000 different languages are spoken around the globe.
Ninety percent of these languages are used by less than 100,000 people, however.
Languages are grouped into families that share a common ancestry. For example, English is related to German and Dutch, and they are all part of the Indo-European family of languages.
These also include Romance languages, such as French, Spanish and Italian, which come from Latin.
Below, the Express has compiled a list of the second most popular spoken languages in the world’s twenty biggest countries by land size.
Perhaps one of the most interesting facts is that in only two of the countries on the list is English the most popular second language.
The second most popular spoken language in the world’s 20 biggest countries revealed
1. Russia (official language: Russian) – Tartar is the second most widely spoken language, used by 4.2 million people.
2. Canada (official language: English) – French is spoken by 21.4 percent of the population.
3. China (official language: Mandarin) – Cantonese is spoken by more than 60 million Chinese.
4. United States (official language: English) – Spanish is undoubtedly the next most dominant spoken language with over 41 million speakers across the country.
5. Brazil (official language: Portuguese) – Spanish is also the next most popular language, spoken by 1.3 percent of the population.
6. Australia (official language: English) – Mandarin is the second most spoken language in Australia, with 2.7 percent of the population choosing it as their home language.
7. India (official language: Hindi) – The second most spoken language in India by the number of speakers is Bengali.
8. Argentina (official language: Spanish) – Italian ranks second among the languages spoken in Argentina. Estimates indicate that over 1.5 million people speak Italian as their first language.
9. Kazakhstan (official language: Kazakh) – The largest country in Central Asia and the ninth largest in the world, Kazakhstan is a multiethnic state, with Kazakhs and Russians comprising the largest percentages of the population. Russian is spoken by 83.7 percent, while 80.1 speak Kazakh.
10. Algeria (official language: Arabic) – Algerian Arabic and Berber are the native languages of over 99 percent of Algerians, with Algerian Arabic spoken by about 72 percent and Berber by 27.4 percent. French, though it has no official status, is widely used in government, culture, and media (newspapers).
11. DR Congo (official language: Kituba) – A 2021 survey found that Lingala was the second-most spoken language in the country, used by 59 percent of the population.
12. Greenland (official language: Greenlandic) – Even though Greenlandic today is the official language, major tensions between the mother language and Danish remain. The political and administrative elites predominately speak Danish while a majority of the population – 70 percent – speaks only Greenlandic.
13. Saudia Arabia (official language: Arabic) – English is spoken by 51.6 percent of the Kingdom’s population.
14. Mexico (official language: Spanish) – The second most popular language is Nahuatl. It was the native tongue of the Aztecs. Nahuatl has more than 1.7 million speakers today.
15. Indonesia (official language: Javanese) – Indonesia boasts a remarkable cultural wealth, with various customs, rituals, and performances deeply ingrained in their society. It is a known fact that Indonesia has a diverse, multilingual population with around 700 different languages used. The second most widely spoken language is Sundanese with 32.4 million speakers.
16. Sudan (official language: Arabic) – Dominated by Sudanese Arabic, Sudan is a multilingual country. The official languages of Sudan are Literary Arabic or Modern Standard Arabic and English according to the 2005 constitution of the Republic of Sudan.
17. Libya (official language: Arabic) – In Libya, standardised Arabic is the official language of the country. However, various other dialects of Arabic are also widely used along with variants of Arabic, including Egyptian and Tunisian Arabic.
18. Iran (official language: Persian) – Pashto spoken by roughly 50 million is the second most popular language.
19. Mongolia (official language: Mongolian) – Mongolian is the official language of Mongolia and is spoken by 95 percent of the population. A variety of dialects of Oirat and Buryat are also spoken across the country making them the second most spoken languages.
20. Peru (official language: Spanish) – Around 84 percent of Peruvians speak Spanish, the official national language. Even so, over 26 percent of the population speaks a first language other than Spanish. Quechua is the second most commonly spoken language (13%), followed by Aymara (2%), and both have official status.