Language Number of people learning the language Number of native speakers Number of countries where the language is spoken English 1.5 billion 527 million 101 French 82 million 118 million 51 Chinese 30 million 1.39 billion 33 Spanish 14.5 million 389 million 31 Italian 8 million 67 million 29 Japanese 3 million 123 million 25 The table illustrates some interesting facts about some of the world's most popular languages to learn. It allows comparisons between the number of people who study a language versus those who speak it as a mother tongue, and shows how many countries have speakers of each of the languages. The prominence of English is striking. 1.5 billion people are learning English compared to only 82 million studying the second most popular language to learn, French. English is spoken in 101 countries, roughly twice as many as French and three times more than Chinese. English is the only language with more learners than native speakers. In terms of native speakers, Chinese is the most spoken language, more than double English with 1.39 billion. It is the third most popular language to learn with 30 million learners. Spanish has over five times more native speakers than Italian, but proportionally fewer learners at 14.5 million for Spanish and 8 million for Italian. As for Japanese, it is the least studied language of those given with 3 million learners. Overall, more