The Post Chronicle published an article with  the “top 10 most spoken world languages”. This list was compiled with information from Wikipedia and CIA’s World Factbook.

1. Mandarin Chinese – 1,365,000,000 – It’s primarily spoken in the People’s Republic of China, Taiwan, Malaysia, United States (mostly in New York City). It includes these Dialects: Northeastern, Beijing, Ji-Lu, Jiao-Liao, Lower Yangtze, Central Plains, Lan-Yin, Southwestern
2. Spanish – 325-500 million – It’s sometimes called “Castilian.” It’s a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia during the 9th century. It’s spoken in 21 countries.
3. English – 309-400 million (Native) and 500 Million to 1.8 billion have it as a second language. It’s a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria.
4. Arabic – 206-422 million – Arabic has 4 different well-known dialects that: Western (Maghrebi), Central (incl. Egyptian), Northern (incl. Levantine, Iraqi), Southern (incl. Gulf, Hejazi, Yemeni). Modern Standard Arabic derives from Classical Arabic, the only surviving member of the Old North Arabian dialect group, attested in Pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions dating back to the 4th century.[4] Classical Arabic has also been a literary language and the liturgical language of Islam since its inception in the 7th century.
5. Hindi – 181 million – It’s also known as “Manak Hindi.” It is a standardised and sanskritised register of the Hindustani language derived from the Khariboli dialect of Delhi. There writing system is called ‘Devanagari.’ It’s spoken in 17 different countries.
6. Portuguese – 178 million – It’s a Romance language developed from Galician-Portuguese that was spoken in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia. It’s mostly spoken in Africa, The Americas, Asia, Europe, and Oceania.
7. Bengali – 173 million – It’s an eastern Indo-Aryan language. It’s spoken in 13 different countries. It’s writing system is called ‘Bengali script.’
8. Russian – 146 million – It’s a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. It’s spoken in more than 8 countries. It’s writing system is called Cyrillic.
9. Japanese – 128 million It’s a member of the Japonic (or Japanese-Ryukyuan) language family. There writing system is called either Romaji or Siddham script.
10. German – 96 million – is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch.

See: The Post Chronicle