New research has found that Hausa language, which is widely spoken in Northern Nigeria and other African nations, is the world’s 11th most spoken language.
According to Spectator Index, there are 150 million speakers of Hausa language all over the world, two million more than speakers of Punjabi (mainly in India) and 21 million more than German speakers.
Mandarin, which is spoken mainly in China, is the world’s most spoken language at 1.09 billion speakers, while English follows in second at 983 million speakers.
See full list of leading languages by number of speakers in million:
Mandarin: 1090
English: 983
Hindustani: 544
Spanish: 527
Arabic: 422
Malay: 281
Russia: 267
Bengali: 261
Portuguese: 229
French: 229
Hausa: 150
Punjabi: 148
German: 129
Japanese: 129
Persian: 121
Swahili: 107
Telugu: 92
(Ethnologue)
