Click here to see enlarged picture
When linguists talk about the historical relationship between languages, they use a tree metaphor. An ancient source (say, Indo-European) has various branches (e.g., Romance, Germanic), which themselves have branches (West Germanic, North Germanic), which feed into specific languages (Swedish, Danish, Norwegian).
Top 10 Most Spoken Languages In The World
| Language | No. of Speaker | Say “Hello” |
| Mandarin | 1 billion+ | “Ni hao” (Nee HaOW) |
| English | 508 million | “What’s up, freak?” |
| Hindustani | 497 million | “Namaste” (Nah-MAH-stay) |
| Spanish | 392 million | “Hola” (OH-la) |
| Russian | 277 million | “Zdravstvuite” (ZDRAST-vet-yah) |
| Arabic | 246 million | “Al salaam a’alaykum” (Ahl sah-LAHM ah ah-LAY-koom) |
| Bengali | 211 million | “Ei Je” (EYE-jay) |
| Portuguese | 191 million | “Bom dia” (bohn DEE-ah) |
| Malay-Indonesian | 159 million | “Selamat pagi” (se-LA-maht PA-gee) |
| French | 129 million | “Bonjour” (bone-JOOR) |