1. By Number of Native Speakers:
* Mandarin Chinese: Approximately 939 million native speakers
* Hindi: Approximately 602 million native speakers
* English: Approximately 379 million native speakers
2. By Total Number of Speakers (Native and Non-Native):
* English: Approximately 1.5 billion speakers
* Mandarin Chinese: Approximately 1.1 billion speakers
* Hindi: Approximately 602 million speakers
3. By Number of Countries Where It's an Official Language:
* English: Spoken in over 60 countries
* French: Spoken in over 29 countries
* Arabic: Spoken in over 26 countries
As you can see, the "most" languages vary depending on the criteria used. However, English, Mandarin Chinese, and Hindi are consistently ranked among the top three most spoken languages in the world.