20 most spoken languages in the world in 2021

Do you want to be ahead of the game when learning a language? If you want to know what the next big thing is, and the languages which are most spoken around the world, read on to discover your potential next language.

Let’s focus on the top 5…

1. English

How many people speak English? 1,132 million speakers

Learn this language if…you love languages without genders that use simple verb conjugations and have a lot of resources to choose from.

Did you know? “I”, “we”, “who”, “two” and “three” date back tens of thousands of years, making them the oldest words in the English language.

If you can understand this article and exchange some words in English, you’re already in luck! English is still the most-spoken language around the world, not due to its native speakers alone, but because many others learn it as a second language. It is a part of the West Germanic language family and is present in six of seven continents as an official language (with 64% of its native speakers being Americans). It is well worth the effort as our lingua franca and a crucial tool for business between cultures!

How to be fluent in English in 3 months

2. Mandarin Chinese

How many people speak Mandarin Chinese? 1,117 million speakers

Learn this language if…you love tone languages with simple grammar and don’t mind dedicating more of your time to discover the complexities behind them.

Did you know? Using two eights in a row (88) is Chinese internet slang for “bye bye”.

The second most spoken language in the world is Mandarin Chinese. It has the largest number of native speakers of any language and is spoken by 70% of all Chinese speakers. That makes it the largest of all Chinese dialects by far. It is also a great reason to learn more about this 1000-year old giant! Many fear learning Mandarin due to its 50,000 different characters – which, in comparison to the 26-letter alphabet, are quite intimidating – but 2,500 characters would be enough for everyday Mandarin to be understood. We think it’s worth the dedication!

3. Hindi

How many people speak Hindi? 615 million speakers

Learn this language if…you don’t mind learning a language with genders, since it is of easy pronunciation and read as it is written.

Did you know? The Hindi language does not use the word "the", or what we call a definite article.

Many might associate the Hindi language with colourful Bollywood movies or the chaotic traffic in Delhi. But Hindi has so much more to give…such as 615 million potential friends and access to an incredible variety of cultures! Giving this Indo-Aryan language a chance will allow you to discover not only incredible music, entertaining films and heart-warming people, it will also allow you to see just how closely it still operates with English. In fact, Hindi gave English words like guru, avatar, mantra, pajamas, cheetah, bungalow and shampoo.

4. Spanish

How many people speak Spanish? 580 million speakers

Learn this language if…you want to learn a language that is spoken as it is written but still love a good grammar challenge.

Did you know? Spanish is also the official language of a country in Central Africa, Equatorial Guinea. 

We talk a lot about Spanish around here, and how could we not? This melodic, cheerful Romance language conquers new hearts wherever it goes. It has also seen an incredible development in its number of speakers due to its growing cultural influence. Many believe Spanish is intimidating due to the rolled “r”, the genders and the complex verb conjugations. However, we think those are all details when you consider the bigger picture: access to 21 Spanish-speaking countries, understanding your favourite party songs and mastering one of the most requested languages nowadays!

10 reasons to start learning Spanish

5. French

How many people speak French? 280 million speakers

Learn this language if…you enjoy a good pronunciation challenge, as well as complex grammar…while getting your foot in the door of a huge variety of countries!

Did you know? 75% of French citizens did not speak French as a mother tongue when the French Revolution took place. Instead, they spoke regional languages.

French continues to be a cultural giant, but the reason might not be as…well…parisienne as you might think! Africa is actually set to be the future of the French language, as 45% of all French speakers were based in Africa in 2018. The Francophone population is also expected to reach 572 million speakers by the year 2030 due to the growing population in the African continent. Having said that, France continues to be a huge attraction and a key country for world politics. The cultural variety and rich history it gives us access to is a wonderful reason to start learning this Romance language today! 

The unexpected benefits of learning a second language

The top 6 — 20 most spoken languages in the world

6. Standard Arabic — 274 million speakers
7. Bengali — 265 million speakers
8. Russian — 258 million speakers
9. Portuguese — 234 million speakers
10. Indonesian — 199 million speakers
11. Urdu — 170 million speakers
12. Standard German — 132 million speakers
13. Japanese — 128 million speakers
14. Swahili — 98 million speakers
15. Marathi — 95 million speakers
16. Telugu — 93 million speakers
17. Western Punjabi — 93 million speakers
18. Wu Chinese — 82 million speakers
19. Tamil — 81 million speakers
20. Turkish — 80 million speakers

How can you find out about the top spoken languages in the world?

The Ethnologue, one of the most trusted platforms regarding languages and their profiles, tells us not the top 3, not the top 5…but the top 200 most-spoken languages around the world last year. Learning one of these languages gives you access to millions of speakers, which in turn gives you a more beautiful experience of the world! And why is this page so important, you ask? Because it includes both native speakers and foreign speakers in their count: this gives any language learner the awareness of the total number of speakers who are walking this earth and who can be potential language partners!

After all, not only native speakers can be helpful for your learning, but other learners can also help you stay on track, too! 

COP26: Together for our planet
The UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow (COP26) brought together 120 world leaders and over 40,000 registered participants, including 22,274 party delegates, 14.124 observers and 3.886 media representatives. For two weeks, the world was riveted on all facets of climate change — the science, the solutions, the political will to act, and clear indications of action.
The outcome of COP26 — the Glasgow Climate Pact — is the fruit of intense negotiations among almost 200 countries over the two weeks, strenuous formal and informal work over many months, and constant engagement both in-person and virtually for nearly two years.
“The approved texts are a compromise,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres. “They reflect the interests, the conditions, the contradictions and the state of political will in the world today. They take important steps, but unfortunately the collective political will was not enough to overcome some deep contradictions.”
Cuts in global greenhouse gas emissions are still far from where they need to be to preserve a livable climate, and support for the most vulnerable countries affected by the impacts of climate change is still falling far short. But COP26 did produce new “building blocks” to advance implementation of the Paris Agreement through actions that can get the world on a more sustainable, low-carbon pathway forward.

What was agreed?

Recognizing the emergency
Countries reaffirmed the Paris Agreement goal of limiting the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5°C. And they went further, expressing “alarm and utmost concern that human activities have caused around 1.1°C of warming to date, that impacts are already being felt in every region, and that carbon budgets consistent with achieving the Paris Agreement temperature goal are now small and being rapidly depleted.” They recognized that the impacts of climate change will be much lower at a temperature increase of 1.5°C compared with 2°C.

Accelerating action
Countries stressed the urgency of action “in this critical decade,” when carbon dioxide emissions must be reduced by 45 per cent to reach net zero around mid-century. But with present climate plans — the Nationally determined Contributions — falling far short on ambition, the Glasgow Climate Pact calls on all countries to present stronger national action plans next year, instead of in 2025, which was the original timeline. Countries also called on UNFCCC to do an annual NDC Synthesis Report to gauge the present level of ambition.

Moving away from fossil fuels
In perhaps the most contested decision in Glasgow, countries ultimately agreed to a provision calling for a phase-down of coal power and a phase-out of “inefficient” fossil fuel subsidies — two key issues that had never been explicitly mentioned in decisions of UN climate talks before, despite coal, oil and gas being the main drivers of global warming. Many countries, and NGOs, expressed dissatisfaction that the language on coal was significantly weakened (from phase-out to phase-down) and consequently, was not as ambitious as it needs to be.

Delivering on climate finance
Developed countries came to Glasgow falling short on their promise to deliver US$100 billion a year for developing countries. Voicing “regret,” the Glasgow outcome reaffirms the pledge and urges developed countries to fully deliver on the US$100 billion goal urgently. Developed countries, in a report, expressed confidence that the target would be met in 2023.

Stepping up support for adaptation
The Glasgow Pact calls for a doubling of finance to support developing countries in adapting to the impacts of climate change and building resilience. This won’t provide all the funding that poorer countries need, but it would significantly increase finance for protecting lives and livelihoods, which so far made up only about 25 per cent of all climate finance (with 75 per cent going towards green technologies to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions). Glasgow also established a work programme to define a global goal on adaptation, which will identify collective needs and solutions to the climate crisis already affecting many countries.

Completing the Paris rulebook
Countries reached agreement on the remaining issues of the so-called Paris rulebook, the operational details for the practical implementation of the Paris Agreement. Among them are the norms related to carbon markets, which will allow countries struggling to meet their emissions targets to purchase emissions reductions from other nations that have already exceeded their targets. Negotiations were also concluded on an Enhanced Transparency Framework, providing for common timeframes and agreed formats for countries to regularly report on progress, designed to build trust and confidence that all countries are contributing their share to the global effort.

Focusing on loss & damage
Acknowledging that climate change is having increasing impacts on people especially in the developing world, countries agreed to strengthen a network — known as the Santiago Network — that connects vulnerable countries with providers of technical assistance, knowledge and resources to address climate risks. They also launched a new “Glasgow dialogue” to discuss arrangements for the funding of activities to avert, minimize and address loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change.

New deals and announcements
There were many other significant deals and announcements — outside of the Glasgow Climate Pact — which can have major positive impacts if they are indeed implemented. These include:

Forests
137 countries took a landmark step forward by committing to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030. The pledge is backed by $12bn in public and $7.2bn in private funding. In addition, CEOs from more than 30 financial institutions with over $8.7 trillion of global assets committed to eliminate investment in activities linked to deforestation.

Methane
103 countries, including 15 major emitters, signed up to the Global Methane Pledge, which aims to limit methane emissions by 30 per cent by 2030, compared to 2020 levels. Methane, one of the most potent greenhouse gases, is responsible for a third of current warming from human activities.

Cars
Over 30 countries, six major vehicle manufacturers and other actors, like cities, set out their determination for all new car and van sales to be zero-emission vehicles by 2040 globally and 2035 in leading markets, accelerating the decarbonization of road transport, which currently accounts for about 10 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Coal
Leaders from South Africa, the United Kingdom, the United States, France, Germany, and the European Union announced a ground-breaking partnership to support South Africa — the world’s most carbon-intensive electricity producer — with $8.5 billion over the next 3–5 years to make a just transition away from coal, to a low-carbon economy.

Private finance
Private financial institutions and central banks announced moves to realign trillions of dollars towards achieving global net zero emissions. Among them is the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, with over 450 firms across 45 countries that control $130 trillion in assets, requiring its member to set robust, science-based near-term targets.

• The UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow (COP26)

Word of the Year 2016

After much discussion, debate, and research, the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2016 is post-truth — an adjective defined as ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief’.

Why was this chosen?
The concept of post-truth has been in existence for the past decade, but Oxford Dictionaries has seen a spike in frequency this year in the context of the EU referendum in the United Kingdom and the presidential election in the United States. It has also become associated with a particular noun, in the phrase post-truth politics.

Post-truth in 2016
Post-truth has gone from being a peripheral term to being a mainstay in political commentary, now often being used by major publications without the need for clarification or definition in their headlines.
Ex.: (The Economist) Obama founded ISIS. George Bush was behind 9/11. Welcome to post-truth politics http://econ.st/2eCASwE;
(The Independent) 'We've entered a post-truth world and there's no going back' http://ind.pn/2fPyZ3v
The term has moved from being relatively new to being widely understood in the course of a year — demonstrating its impact on the national and international consciousness. The concept of post-truth has been simmering for the past decade, but Oxford shows the word spiking in frequency this year in the context of the Brexit referendum in the UK and the presidential election in the US, and becoming associated overwhelmingly with a particular noun, in the phrase post-truth politics.

A brief history of post-truth
The compound word post-truth exemplifies an expansion in the meaning of the prefix post- that has become increasingly prominent in recent years. Rather than simply referring to the time after a specified situation or event — as in post-war or post-match — the prefix in post-truth has a meaning more like ‘belonging to a time in which the specified concept has become unimportant or irrelevant’. This nuance seems to have originated in the mid-20th century, in formations such as post-national (1945) and post-racial (1971).
Post-truth seems to have been first used in this meaning in a 1992 essay by the late Serbian-American playwright Steve Tesich in The Nation magazine. Reflecting on the Iran-Contra scandal and the Persian Gulf War, Tesich lamented that ‘we, as a free people, have freely decided that we want to live in some post-truth world’. There is evidence of the phrase ‘post-truth’ being used before Tesich’s article, but apparently with the transparent meaning ‘after the truth was known’, and not with the new implication that truth itself has become irrelevant.
A book, The Post-truth Era, by Ralph Keyes appeared in 2004, and in 2005 American comedian Stephen Colbert popularized an informal word relating to the same concept: truthiness, defined by Oxford Dictionaries as ‘the quality of seeming or being felt to be true, even if not necessarily true’. Post-truth extends that notion from an isolated quality of particular assertions to a general characteristic of our age.

For more details go to: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/word-of-the-year/word-of-the-year-2016

10 Reasons Why Arts in Education is So Important for Kids

1. Creativity. This may seem like a no-brainer, but the arts allow kids to express themselves better than math or science. As the Washington Post says, In an arts program, your child will be asked to recite a monologue in 6 different ways, create a painting that represents a memory, or compose a new rhythm to enhance a piece of music. If children have practice thinking creatively, it will come naturally to them now and in their future career.
2. Improved Academic Performance. The arts don’t just develop a child’s creativity — the skills they learn because of them spill over into academic achievement. PBS says, A report by Americans for the Arts states that young people who participate regularly in the arts (three hours a day on three days each week through one full year) are four times more likely to be recognized for academic achievement, to participate in a math and science fair or to win an award for writing an essay or poem than children who do not participate.
3. Motor Skills. This applies mostly to younger kids who do art or play an instrument. Simple things like holding a paintbrush and scribbling with a crayon are an important element to developing a child’s fine motor skills. According to the National Institutes of Health, developmental milestones around age three should include drawing a circle and beginning to use safety scissors. Around age four, children may be able to draw a square and begin cutting straight lines with scissors.
4. Confidence. While mastering a subject certainly builds a student’s confidence, there is something special about participating in the arts. Getting up on a stage and singing gives kids a chance to step outside their comfort zone. As they improve and see their own progress, their self-confidence will continue to grow.
5. Visual Learning. Especially for young kids, drawing, painting, and sculpting in art class help develop visual-spatial skills. Dr. Kerry Freedman, Head of Art and Design Education at Northern Illinois University says, Children need to know more about the world than just what they can learn through text and numbers. Art education teaches students how to interpret, criticize, and use visual information, and how to make choices based on it.
6. Decision Making. The arts strengthen problem solving and critical thinking skills. How do I express this feeling through my dance? How should I play this character? Learning how to make choices and decisions will certainly carry over into their education and other parts of life — as this is certainly a valuable skill in adulthood.
7. Perseverance. I know from personal experience that the arts can be challenging. When I was trying to learn and master the clarinet, there were many times when I became so frustrated that I wanted to quit. But I didn’t. After practicing hard, I learned that hard work and perseverance pay off. This mindset will certainly matter as they grow — especially during their career where they will likely be asked to continually develop new skills and work through difficult projects.
8. Focus. As you persevere through painting or singing or learning a part in a play, focus is imperative. And certainly focus is vital for studying and learning in class as well as doing a job later in life.
9. Collaboration. Many of the arts such as band, choir, and theater require kids to work together. They must share responsibility and compromise to achieve their common goal. Kids learn that their contribution to the group is integral to its success — even if they don’t have the solo or lead role.
10. Accountability. Just like collaboration, kids in the arts learn that they are accountable for their contributions to the group. If they drop the ball or mess up, they realize that it’s important to take responsibility for what they did. Mistakes are a part of life, and learning to accept them, fix them, and move on will serve kids well as they grow older.

Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.

Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy

Do not imagine you can exorcize what oppresses you in life by giving vent to it in art.

Gustave Flaubert

If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.

Kennedy

Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.

Chesterton

If my husband would ever meet a woman on the street who looked like the women in his paintings, he would fall over in a dead faint.

Picasso, Mrs.

• INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC SPEAKING COMPETITION 2016