Approximately, 1.2 billion people (around 16% of the world's population) speak some form of Chinese as their first language (Chinese Academy of Social Sciences - 2012). The language most people know how to speak in Mandarin Chinese, with its about 1.2 billion speakers - most of them are native speakers. English is the second most spoken language in the world with an estimated 1 billion speakers. Around .5 billion people speak Spanish, which is the third most spoken language.