The most common language in the world?

The most common language in the world, by the number of native speakers, is Mandarin Chinese.

Here's why:

* Native speakers: Mandarin Chinese has over 939 million native speakers, making it the language spoken by the most people who consider it their first language.

* Total speakers: Including second language speakers, Mandarin Chinese has over 1.1 billion speakers globally.

While English is often considered the global lingua franca, its total number of speakers is smaller than Mandarin Chinese.