Rank these languages according to the number of native speakers

Hausa???

It's the primary language of Nigeria. Apparently.

Chinese, Spanish, English, Hindi, Russian, German, Korean, French, Italian, Hausa. I am pretty sure the last three are not in the top ten, but I don't know which ones are!

You should have put these in alphabetical order!...

I know the top three are Mandarin, Spanish, and English (in that order). I have no idea about the rest.

Hint: when you're doing these quiz-type things, it's best to order them randomly, instead of in the exact order of the answers.

I don't like quiz surveys. They make me feel stupid.

So, they are in order? Cool! That means I got it right!

'twas a trick question I wanted to see how many people would think "naah, that can't be right - it's too easy!"

Or people like me that think "I don't know, I'll just put it in the order they wrote it". Thanks.

I've seen lists, although not recently, and I hardly memorized them. I made an educated guess based on: countries with enormous populations, countries with lots of former colonies. I feel pretty confident that I did well.

What was the point of this?

Post the exact populations, that would be more interesting

It's a quiz survey, that's the point of it. That's why this place is called "Survey Central"

I'll post the full list, with figures, tomorrow.

Chinese, Spanish, English, Hindi, French (African colonies),Russian, Korean, German, Hausa (never heard of it, but it's probably more than Italian),Italian (only because I don't think they had any colonies)

The correct order, with figures, is:

Chinese (Mandarin) - 882,000,000
Spanish - 332,000,000
English - 322,000,000
Hindi - 182,000,000
Russian - 170,000,000
German - 98,000,000
Korean - 75,000,000
French - 72,000,000
Italian - 37,000,000
Hausa - 24,200,000

For some odd reason, I made a mistake when I said that there were only three in my list that were not in the actual top ten (I think it's because I changed my list after creating the question ) - in fact, the lowest four are not in the top ten.

The four top ten languages that are missing from my list are:

Bengali - 189,000,000
Portuguese - 170,000,000
Japanese - 125,000,000
Chinese (Wu) - 77,175,000

The full list can be found here: http://www.sil.org/ethnologue/top100.html

Dutch is 48th... yippeeee!!!! Only 20 million who can understand me!

I think I'm pretty accurate.

other biggies: Cantonese, Portuguese (Brazil), Arabic, whatever they speak in Indonesia (Java?)

Actually, I think they still speak C++ in Indonesia...

I though you weren't that type of geek?

I'm not, really! I was going to subtitle that comment with "Hey, look, I made a computer joke!" I must admit I was rather proud of myself; but I don't actually know anything about either of those languages. I just know they exist, pretty much.
Am I off the hook?

You picked a particularly appropriate language in that C++ could legitimately be considered the predecessor of Java. Nonetheless, I'll chalk it up to luck; you're off the hook!

OK, I actually did know that. But that's all I really know. Really.

I think you're actually a geek in disguise. I mean if it had sucked *then* you'd be off the hook. But you didn't just *try* to make a geek joke, you made one that worked. Hard to escape those charges

Well, I hang out with enough computer geeks that a bit of it is bound to rub off. And I make no argument with being a geek--I'm just an ancient Semitics geek, not a computer one! Really, you can ask romkey, he'll attest to my computer illiteracy!

A geek of one flavour making a brief crossover to another eh? Well that does make sense, I guess we could let you off with a warning this time If you're not careful though you might start sounding like a computer nerd. You've obviously fallen in with a bad crowd

I know, I think they're the people my mother warned me about. I think her exact words were, "Enheduanna, beware of geeks in sheep's clothing." Or something like that. Maybe it was just "beware of geeks in clothing."

or "beware of geeks in sheep"?

Or perhaps "beware of geeks clothing" - it's both toxic due to a lack of washing and definitely not your best choice if you want to look good or make a fashion statement.