The most common first language is Chinese, spoken by more than 1.1 billion people. The `common speech’ (Pûtônghuà) is the standard form of Chinese, with a pronunciation based on that of Beijing.

The most widespread, as well as the second most spoken language, is English, with a conservative estimate of 800 million speakers. Of these, some 310 million are native speakers, mainly in the US (about 270 million) and the UK (60 million). The third most spoken language is Spanish.