In the graphic it reads, "Twenty-three of these languages are a mother tongue for more than 50 million people. The 23 languages make up the native tongue of 4.1

In the graphic it reads, "Twenty-three of these languages are a mother tongue for more than 50 million people. The 23 languages make up the native tongue of 4.1 billion people." wtf? What's the difference between mother tongue and native tongue? Both terms redirect to "first language" on Wikipedia, or what linguists refer to as "L1". edit: Oh! The sentence was meant to be parsed that it was more than 50 million speakers per each of the 23 languages, not more than 50 million for the whole 23 languages combined. Man that was difficult for me to parse. I thought it was trying to say something about the difference between mother and native tongues.