* Defining "speak French": What constitutes "speaking French"? Is it fluency, basic understanding, or just being able to understand some phrases?
* Lack of comprehensive data: There isn't a global census specifically on language spoken.
* Changing demographics: The number of French speakers is constantly changing due to factors like migration, language acquisition, and language loss.
However, we can provide some estimates:
* Native speakers: It is estimated that around 280 million people worldwide speak French as their native language.
* Total speakers: Some sources estimate that 300 million people worldwide speak French as a first or second language.
Therefore, a rough estimate would be that around 4% of the world's population speaks French.
It's important to remember that these are just estimates and the actual percentage could be slightly higher or lower.