In today’s article, we’ll take a trip to find out the most studied languages in the world. And yes, I said, “studied.” While it’s good to know which languages are the most spoken throughout the world, this doesn’t truly show us which ones lure in the most learners. So read on as we unveil the big winners below.
Last Updated: 18/11/2023
What Are the Most Studied Languages in the World?
Tons of articles and studies take interest in figuring out the most spoken languages in the world, and the runners-up. It’s a relatively simple thing to estimate for many languages, since good demographic statistics and census data are easily accessible nowadays. The U.S. Census Bureau asks residents questions about the primary language spoken at their home, their level of English, and what other languages they speak in order to provide better education services, ensure equal opportunity, and trace how the country is changing.
But what are the most studied languages?
These two things aren’t necessarily the same, since people aren’t limited to learning the language or languages that are spoken in their country or region (thankfully!).
Well, it’s hard to answer this question since so few people are interested in studying it. However, comparing different studies and sources has helped us get closer to an answer. The results?
- English — Big surprise there, right?
- French
- Spanish
- Italian
- Chinese
- Japanese
- German
If I only had one comment to make, I’d daresay that European languages have the upper hand.
When it comes down to it, culture is probably one of the main motivators for this. Truly understanding a country’s culture happens through learning its language and reading its most famous authors (or even their most popular cookbooks).
Another reason is that many Asian languages are notoriously difficult to learn. However, they are becoming increasingly important in today’s business world, so I predict that in the next 10 to 20 years this list might see some big changes.
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And What Are the Most Taught Languages in America?
Of course, when it comes to the United States, we aren’t known for our strong language-learning skills. However, our schools offer plenty of opportunities (and even requirements in some states) for students to learn another language.
A recent report estimated that 10.6 million children within a K-12 program were learning languages other than English. Although most elementary school students learn Spanish before anything else, middle, high school and university students can choose which language they learn.
So, what did they choose to learn?
It probably comes as no surprise that Spanish is by far the most studied language in the United States, both in high school and college. The United States has no official language — although most Americans speak English — and there are over 41 million native Spanish speakers living in the country. But some of the other languages on this list might surprise you.
Most taught languages in higher education
According to the Modern Language Association (MLA), the top 10 most studied languages in United States colleges and universities are***:
- Spanish is the most studied language in the US, with 50% of college students choosing to learn Spanish.
- French is next at just over 12%
- American Sign Language is studied by 7% of students
- German is studied by 5%
- Japanese has overtaken Italian, which lost 1 in 5 enrollments in the period from 2013-2016
- Italian is next at just over 4%
- Chinese is at 3.9%, but between 1990 and 2013, the number of American colleges and universities that offer this language has more than doubled!
- Arabic is steadily growing, at 2.1% in 2013
- Latin, at 1.7%, is still taught in most US universities even though it’s considered a dead language! (Although most of the people we learn about in history classes are dead, too, so I suppose it isn’t that surprising…)
- Russian is chosen by 1.4% percent of students
BONUS: Korean, another language that saw a jump in enrollment from 2013 to 2016, comes in at 11th
BONUS: Ancient Greek, at less than 1%, comes in at 12th, followed by Portuguese, Ancient Hebrew, and Modern Hebrew, respectively
Unfortunately, the Modern Language Association report that provided this data also found that enrollment in language courses across US higher education is dropping. Every language except Japanese and Korean experienced a significant decline during the time between studies (which are published periodically, here we are talking about the period from 2013 and 2016).
Why is that?
Inside Higher Ed points to both program cuts (due to budget constraints) and lack of student interest as big factors.
Most studied languages in grade school
In primary and secondary schools, the results are more or less the same with one difference — most high schools in the United States do not offer Italian. Instead, Latin takes its place, although it is no longer used in any official context. Below are the results for K-12**:
- Spanish: Whether it’s due to the students’ interest, their parents’ choice or the school’s offerings, Spanish is by far the most studied language in the US, with over 70% of K-12 students studying this language
- French is next up, at 15%
- German at less than 5%
- Latin, surprisingly, finds itself next at 2%
- Japanese is next with less than 1%
- And Chinese is last. However, more and more schools are offering Chinese, so expect to see this number rise in the next few years.
What Languages Do Europeans Study Most?
Unlike Americans, most Europeans study at least two foreign languages during their education. According to Eurostat, the statistical office for the European Commission, 60% of middle school (~age 11-12) students learned more than one foreign language at school in 2015.
Foreign language education in the EU begins very early. The same European Commission report found that in 2015, 83.8% of elementary students were learning at least one foreign language, up from 67.3% in 2004.
Which languages are the most popular?
- English: 97.3% of middle schoolers, about 17 million students, in Europe study English! 18 EU countries have policies that make English a compulsory subject at some point in a person’s schooling.
- French (33.8%)
- German (23.1%)
- Spanish (13.6%)
- Russian (2.7%)
- Italian (1.1%)
Of course, these numbers are all focused on the most studied languages when it comes to traditional language classes. What these statistics fail to take into account is the growing population that uses self-study and other alternative methods to learn a foreign language – i.e. you!
What language(s) are you currently learning (with MosaLingua or otherwise)? Have these numbers made you want to pick up another language? Tell us about it in the comments section!
Our sources
- U.S. Census Bureau
- Italian, the fourth most studied language – 2014
- American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages
- Modern Language Association – 2016
- Eurobarometer – Europeans and their Languages – 2012
- Eurostat – 2015
- European and their languages – 2012
i was criticizing the portuguese language and i misspelled some words in my comment above i apologize for that hahahah
the reason why portuguese isn’t in the list is because it is pretty hard to learn and particularly difficult to speak at least fluently , besides is neither widely spoken nor does it have a huge significant when it comes to trade and bussines ,as a matter of fact if it wasnt for brazil the only major contry where it would spoken would be portugal that is also a very small country, and of course some african countries that has the portuguese as their official lenguage , but then again those countries are also very poor and underdeveloped indeed, some of them are among the poorest countries in the world ….
If you are Spanish like me is the easiest language to learn because is almost the same.
As we speak I am studying Arabic, I love it. First I was worried that it might difficult for but it turned out it isn’t as difficult as people say. It uses easy alphabet, it’s based on derivative system whereby many word forms can be created from a three, four, five or six letters verb: write, wrote, writer, written, writing, …etc One beautiful aspect of Arabic is that there is not a single letter that’s written but not pronounced (silent) like in English for instance the ‘g’ in right, the ‘p’ in psychology or in pneumonia. Also, there isn’t a single letter that’s pronounced but not written like the ‘sh’ sound in nature or future in English.
Hi Amy,
Thanks for your input. Yes, some languages have it a lot easier than others when it comes to writing.
Most Romance language are the same in this aspect with a few exception when it comes to borrowed words.
Thanks again for your message!
And good luck with Arabic!
And portuguese is spoken officially on 5 continents. Portugues is the most spoken languuage in the southern hemisphere.
Hello,
Thank you for your comment!
As you might already know, the list of the most spoken language in the world as well as that of the most studied one is very hard to prove to be true. Many people will either, disagree, partially agree, or completely agree with both what we and/or you said. One of our apps is for learning Portuguese, so we definitely aren’t against people learning it 🙂
Only 4 Asia-Africa-Europe-South America
They don’t speak Portuguese in Antarctica-Australia-North America
There are way more native speakers of Portuguese in the world..much more than french italian German and even japoneses. So why is portuguese not on your website as very important? Italian should not even be on this list.
In addition to the 10 countries (former portuguese colonies) there are perhaps 265 million portuguese speakers in the worlld. And there are millions of portuguee 2nd or 3rd language speakers in countries such as: China, japan, India, Senegal, zairre, south africa, Argentina, Uruguay, paraguay, colombia – the USA as well.
There is denying that there is a great demand to learn portuguese. Brazil already has that 5th strongestworlld economy –
Hello and thanks for sharing.
This is the list of the most studied language, not the most spoken. Of course, this article talks about people studying a foreign language, not children studying their own language at school.
We do have an article (below) with the most spoken languages, and Portuguese is in it, while Italian isn’t.
https://www.mosalingua.com/en/most-widely-spoken-languages/
I hope this article would make more sense.
There are more French speakers than Portuguese speakers if you count all speakers. There are more countries where French is spoken on a daily basis and where is official. There’s a reason why.
The results of the most studied languages in America are always going to be skewed since most schools put very limited resources in language programs and, as expected, will offer only the most “useful” or relevant languages. For example, Spanish and French are virtually always offered at the high school level and often starting in middle school (at least when I was in middle school in the 1990s). A lot of schools have German as an option once students reach high school, but in recent years, as schools continue to make poor financial decisions, language programs get cut often and German is dropped from the curriculum leaving students with only Spanish & French.
In very large cities, such as New York, schools are more likely to offer “exotic” languages like Chinese (Mandarin) or Japanese at the high school level, but that doesn’t seem to be very common in my experience.
I live in Columbus, OH and we have a surprisingly diverse population, with lots of Chinese, Japanese, Korean and various African nations being represented, but our schools still mostly only offer Spanish, French and maybe German (to be fair we also have a lot of Spanish speaking residents). Since Columbus has a particularly high percentage of Somalians, I think it would be kind of cool if schools would adapt their language programs to offer locally relevant languages since it would be easier for the students to apply their studies to the real world. For example, in the areas where Columbus has a lot of Somalian immigrants, schools could offer Somali as a language and it would be something that the students could then use to talk to their neighbors and friends, rather than learning French when so few people in Columbus speak French (I’ve lived here since 2009 and have only ever heard French spoken once, but I’ve met dozens of Somalis around town). Now, to be fair, finding someone qualified to teach a language like Somali would be much more difficult and perhaps people wouldn’t be interested since it isn’t a popular international language. But the possibility of practical application could make it more appealing around here, just as Chinese / Japanese might be found in other cities with a very large Chinese / Japanese immigrant populations.
**Side note: German was removed from the curriculum at a lot of schools decades ago during / after WWII and hasn’t ever completely recovered in the public school system. It’s still one of the 3 most common foreign languages in middle / high schools, but not nearly as common as French & Spanish.
My school, in New York, only offers Spanish to us, however, if you’re chinese who can already read and write full essays, they have chinese class for you, for everyone else it’s just Spanish. I personally think it is unfair….
Hello to everyone. I’m from Brazil, so my mother tongue is Portuguese. In the past few years I’ve been studying English (C1), Spanish (B2) and French (A1) as well. Here schools usually offers English since the Elementary School and Spanish at the Middle School and High School.
The point of learning languages is not talking to people that can speak your language. Somalis in the US speak English so what’s the point of learning a language if you can communicate with them anyway? If French & Spanish are widely taught is because they are spoken in more than 20 countries each. If you are gonna work within or without the US it’s better to reach out people that don’t speak English. & believe me, French and Spanish generally don’t speak English.