Top languages of the world....

I always wondered which were the most spoken languages in the world. I thought it would be English, with Spanish also pretty high considering that the whole on Latin America spoke it. Of course I expected some Indian languages to be in there, but I was pleasantly surprised to see Marathi at No.17 in the whole world ahead of Italian, Vietnamese , Gujarathi or Persian.

Sorry about the format of the post.

Language	Speakers	Group	Location
MANDARIN CHINESE	952,000,000	Sino-Tibetan	CHINA
English	470,000,000	Indo-European	Europe/America/etc.
HINDI	418,000,000	Indo-European	INDIA
Spanish	381,000,000	Indo-European	Europe/America
Russian	288,000,000	Indo-European	Europe/Central Asia
Arabic	219,000,000	Afro-Asiatic	Middle East/N Africa
BENGALI	196,000,000	Indo-European	INDIA
Portuguese	182,000,000	Indo-European	Europe/America
Malay	155,000,000	Malayo-Polynesian	Malaya/Indonesia
Japanese	126,000,000	Altaic	Japan
French	124,000,000	Indo-European	Europe
German	121,000,000	Indo-European	Europe
URDU	100,000,000	Indo-European	INDIA
PUNJABI	94,000,000	Indo-European	INDIA
Korean	75,000,000	Altaic	Korea
TELUGU	73,000,000	Dravidian	INDIA
MARATHI	70,000,000	Indo-European	INDIA
TAMIL	69,000,000	Dravidian	INDIA

Credit: The Proceedings of the Friesian School, Fourth Series