Chinese Mandarin, most spoken language in business

Chinese Mandarin, most spoken language in business

Most Spoken Language in Business, Mandarin Chinese

Mandarin is the official spoken language in China. It is spoken by 730 million people. According to Bloomberg Rankings, it is now scored highest in a ranking of languages for business usefulness, excluding English.

The rankings takes into account…

  • the number of speakers
  • the number of countries where the language is official
  • economical rates
  • educational rates

Doing business in Asia will call more and more for language abilities to be successful in non-English speaking countries. It provides advantages by being closer to the culture and habits and it also favours connections in a faster and more complex business environment.

World Facts

Number of speakers in the world per language (approximations only):

  • French; 75.9 million*
  • Arabic; 295 million*
  • Spanish; 470 million*

Mandarin and Cantonese are often confused when people request translation services for China. It is easy to confuse them as the written form can be different depending on the country you are in. We have produced a simple table explaining the differences between Chinese languages and dialects.

*Based on figures from 2010, first language speakers only

Updated: 1st of December 2015