Surprising Languages Most Spoken

I had a trivia question in the pool in St. Thomas Virgin Islands last week and they said GLOBALLY (not USA) the three most common languages spoken are: English Mandarin Hindi Which I just looked up on the internet and they were wrong. Hindi is #4. Spanish is #3.

Our nation's 2 official languages are English and French, so those are obviously spoken here. There are several dialects of French, even within regions, because the people hail from various parts of the country, and they all have a different way to say the same thing. The next most spoken language I would say is either Mandarin or Punjabi, followed by Ukrainian.

I didn't know that. I would have thought Chinese.

I would have thought it was French or Italian. Well, I speak fluent English and Latvian but I can tell you when I had to learn the two languages simultaneously, it was difficult. Then I have also taken some French and some German but know some bits and things about them,

It surprises me, too. I do know that in my area, we have a lot of Montagnard Vietnamese people, but I would have thought the third language was Chinese, due to the heavy flow of Chinese immigrants who came to work on the railroads in the western states. There are a surprisingly large number of Japanese immigrants, as well. At one time, probably the 1930s, maybe German, Polish, or Italian would have been a big language, but I guess Europeans wanted to assimilate quickly.

That's really surprising. I thought it would be Chinese.

Iam not sure what I would have guessed.

Vieetnamese would be pretty common here too I think. I must research it. You've made me curious.