Misc
Ranked: The Top Languages Spoken in the World
See this visualization first on the Voronoi app.
Ranked: The Top Languages Spoken in the World
This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.
The top languages spoken in the world reflect economic trends, populated countries, and even colonial history.
Here are the most spoken languages around the world as of 2023. These figures come from Ethnologue, which publishes a list of the largest languages every year.
The 12 Most Spoken Languages on Earth
English was born in the United Kingdom but today belongs to the modern world as the main international language of business and politics.
That’s why it’s not very surprising to find English as the world’s most spoken language, with 1.5 billion speakers as of 2023.
| Rank | Language | # of Speakers (2023) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | English | 1,500,000,000 |
| 2 | Mandarin | 1,100,000,000 |
| 3 | Hindi | 609,500,000 |
| 4 | Spanish | 559,100,000 |
| 5 | French | 309,800,000 |
| 6 | Standard Arabic | 274,000,000 |
| 7 | Bengali | 272,800,000 |
| 8 | Portuguese | 263,600,000 |
| 9 | Russian | 255,000,000 |
| 10 | Urdu | 231,700,000 |
| 11 | Indonesian | 199,100,000 |
| 12 | German | 133,200,000 |
In second place is Mandarin, the most spoken Chinese language dialect with 1.1 billion speakers. Originating in North China, it has become the most spoken language in China and Taiwan, as well as having millions of speakers spread across Southeast Asia and the world.
India is also represented in this ranking, but despite being the world’s most populated country, its speakers are spread out over multiple different languages. Hindi is the main language spoken in North India and an official language of the government, but other languages like Bengali are widely spoken in other regions, in this case in East India (and neighboring Bangladesh).
It’s also notable how languages from former colonial powers—like English, Spanish, French, and Portuguese—all have hundreds of millions of speakers, despite their mother countries accounting for a fraction of that total.
Public Opinion
Charted: How Americans Feel About Federal Government Agencies
Fourteen of 16 federal government agencies garnered more favorable responses than unfavorable ones. But what were the outliers?
Chart: How Americans Rate 16 Federal Government Agencies
This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.
Come election time, America won’t hesitate to show its approval or disapproval of the country’s elected political representatives. That said, feelings about the federal bureaucracy and its associated agencies are a little harder to gauge.
We chart the results from an opinion poll conducted by Pew Research Center between March 13-19, 2023. In it, 10,701 adults—a representative of the U.S. adult population—were asked whether they felt favorably or unfavorably towards 16 different federal government agencies.
Americans Love the Park Service, Are Divided Over the IRS
Broadly speaking, 14 of the 16 federal government agencies garnered more favorable responses than unfavorable ones.
Of them, the Parks Service, Postal Service, and NASA all had the approval of more than 70% of the respondents.
| Agency | Favorable | Unfavorable | Not sure |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🏞️ National Park Service | 81% | 7% | 12% |
| 📮 U.S. Postal Service | 77% | 20% | 3% |
| 🚀 NASA | 74% | 9% | 17% |
| 💼 Social Security Administration | 61% | 28% | 12% |
| 🔬 CDC | 56% | 38% | 6% |
| 🎖️ Veterans Affairs | 56% | 28% | 16% |
| 🌿 EPA | 55% | 31% | 14% |
| 💉 Health & Human Services | 55% | 30% | 15% |
| 🕵️ FBI | 52% | 36% | 12% |
| 🚗 Department of Transportation | 52% | 36% | 12% |
| 🛡️ Department of Homeland Security | 51% | 35% | 13% |
| ⚖️ Department of Justice | 49% | 41% | 10% |
| 🕵️♂️ CIA | 46% | 33% | 21% |
| 📚 Department of Education | 45% | 47% | 8% |
| 💰 Federal Reserve | 43% | 37% | 20% |
| 💼 IRS | 42% | 51% | 7% |
Note: Figures are rounded. No answer responses are not shown.
Only the Department of Education and the IRS earned more unfavorable responses, and between them, only the IRS had a majority (51%) of unfavorable responses.
There are some caveats to remember with this data. Firstly, tax collection is a less-friendly activity than say, maintaining picturesque parks. Secondly, the survey was conducted a month before taxes were typically due, a peak time for experiencing filing woes.
Nevertheless, the IRS has come under fire in recent years. As per a New York Times article in 2019, eight years of budget cuts have stymied the agency’s ability to scrutinize tax filings from wealthier and more sophisticated filers.
At the same time poorer Americans are facing increasing audits on wage subsidies available to low income workers. According to a Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse report, this subset of filers was audited five-and-a-half more times the average American.
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