The map of the world according to what languages people want to learn

The above map details the most popular languages studied on the website Duolingo in each country.

The language learning website carried out some research among its 120 million users across 194 countries, to find the most popular languages being studied around the world.

Although Spanish retains popularity in the UK, the US and some Scandinavian countries, the overwhelming result across the world is that English is the most popular language to learn.

French was the second most popular language, with 35 countries choosing it first and with it being the second most popular language to study in 77 countries.

Interestingly, Swedish is the most sought after language in Sweden - which Duolingo suggested was due to high immigration. Likewise in Norway, Norwegian was the second most popular language to learn.

The percentage of English learners in Duolingo users was high across all countries, nearing 100 per cent in some...

Picture: Duolingo

...whereas the numbers dropped off a little for French, further illustrating the lead English has over other languages in desirability:

Picture: Duolingo

A visualisation in the South China Morning Post recently explored this topic in another way, visualising the relative popularity of 23 most-used languages by the numbers of speakers worldwide.

Unsurprisingly, Chinese dominates the visualisation, with 1.197 billion native speakers.

However, the study did also find that the most popular languages being learned was indeed English, with 1.5 billion people learning.

More: A literary history of the English language in one map

More: A map of the world according to what languages we want to learn