List of languages by total number of speakers

This is a list of languages by total number of speakers.

Principal language families of the world (and in some cases geographic groups of families). For greater detail, see Distribution of languages in the world.

It is difficult to define what constitutes a language as opposed to a dialect. For example, Chinese and Arabic are sometimes considered single languages, but each includes several mutually unintelligible varieties, and so they are sometimes considered language families instead. Conversely, colloquial registers of Hindi and Urdu are almost completely mutually intelligible, and are sometimes classified as one language, Hindustani. Such rankings should be used with caution, because it is not possible to devise a coherent set of linguistic criteria for distinguishing languages in a dialect continuum.[1]

There is no single criterion for how much knowledge is sufficient to be counted as a second-language speaker. For example, English has about 450 million native speakers but, depending on the criterion chosen, can be said to have as many as two billion speakers.[2]

There are also difficulties in obtaining reliable counts of speakers, which vary over time because of population change and language shift. In some areas, there is no reliable census data, the data is not current, or the census may not record languages spoken, or record them ambiguously. Sometimes speaker populations are exaggerated for political reasons, or speakers of minority languages may be underreported in favor of a national language.[3]

Ethnologue (2024)

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Ethnologue lists the following languages as having 50 million or more total speakers.[4] This section does not include entries that Ethnologue identifies as macrolanguages encompassing several varieties, such as Arabic, Lahnda, Persian, Malay, Pashto, and Chinese.

Most spoken languages, Ethnologue, 2024[4]
Language Family Branch First-language
(L1) speakers
Second-language
(L2) speakers
Total speakers
(L1+L2)
English
(excl. creole languages)
Indo-European Germanic 380 million 1.135 billion 1.515 billion
Mandarin Chinese
(incl. Standard Chinese, but excl. other varieties)
Sino-Tibetan Sinitic 941 million 199 million 1.140 billion
Hindi
(excl. Urdu)
Indo-European Indo-Aryan 345 million 264 million 609 million
Spanish
(excl. creole languages)
Indo-European Romance 486 million 74 million 560 million
Modern Standard Arabic
(excl. dialects)
Afro-Asiatic Semitic 0[a] 332 million 332 million
French
(excl. creole languages)
Indo-European Romance 74 million 238 million 312 million
Bengali Indo-European Indo-Aryan 237 million 41 million 278 million
Portuguese
(excl. creole languages)
Indo-European Romance 236 million 27 million 264 million
Russian Indo-European Balto-Slavic 148 million 108 million 255 million
Urdu
(excl. Hindi)
Indo-European Indo-Aryan 70 million 168 million 238 million
Indonesian
(excl. other Malay)
Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian 44 million 155 million 199 million
Standard German Indo-European Germanic 76 million 58 million 134 million
Japanese Japonic 123 million <1 million 123 million
Nigerian Pidgin English Creole Krio 5 million 116 million 121 million
Egyptian Arabic
(excl. other Arabic dialects)
Afro-Asiatic Semitic 78 million 25 million 103 million
Marathi Indo-European Indo-Aryan 83 million 16 million 99 million
Telugu Dravidian South-Central 83 million 13 million 96 million
Turkish Turkic Oghuz 84 million 6 million 90 million
Hausa Afro-Asiatic Chadic 54 million 34 million 88 million
Tamil Dravidian Southern 79 million 8 million 87 million
Yue Chinese
(incl. Cantonese)
Sino-Tibetan Sinitic 86 million 1 million 87 million
Swahili Niger–Congo Bantu 3 million 83 million 87 million
Vietnamese Austroasiatic Vietic 85 million 1 million 86 million
Wu Chinese
(incl. Shanghainese)
Sino-Tibetan Sinitic 83 million <1 million 83 million
Tagalog[b] Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian 29 million 54 million 83 million
Western Punjabi
(excl. Eastern Punjabi)
Indo-European Indo-Aryan 82 million
Korean Koreanic 81 million <1 million 81 million
Iranian Persian
(excl. other Persian dialects)
Indo-European Iranian 62 million 17 million 78 million
Javanese Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian 68 million
Italian Indo-European Romance 64 million 3 million 67 million
Gujarati Indo-European Indo-Aryan 58 million 5 million 63 million
Thai Kra–Dai Zhuang–Tai 21 million 40 million 61 million
Amharic Afro-Asiatic Semitic 35 million 25 million 60 million
Kannada Dravidian Southern 44 million 15 million 59 million
Levantine Arabic
(excl. other Arabic dialects)
Afro-Asiatic Semitic 51 million 2 million 54 million
Bhojpuri Indo-European Indo-Aryan 53 million <1 million 53 million
Min Nan Chinese
(incl. Hokkien)
Sino-Tibetan Sinitic 51 million <1 million 51 million

The World Factbook (2022)

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The World Factbook, produced by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), estimates the ten most spoken languages (L1 + L2) in 2022 as follows:[6]

Most spoken languages, CIA, 2022[6]
Language Percentage of world population (2022)
English 18.8%
Mandarin Chinese 13.8%
Hindi 7.5%
Spanish 6.9%
French 3.4%
Arabic 3.4%
Bengali 3.4%
Russian 3.2%
Portuguese 3.2%
Urdu 2.9%

See also

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Explanatory notes

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  1. ^ Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) is not an L1. Arabic speakers first learn their respective local dialect. MSA is acquired through formal education.[5]
  2. ^ Tagalog and Filipino are defined as two different languages in the ISO 639 standard. Ethnologue considers that Filipino is a standardized variety of the Tagalog language with no speakers.

References

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  1. ^ Paolillo, John C.; Das, Anupam (31 March 2006). "Evaluating language statistics: the Ethnologue and beyond" (PDF). UNESCO Institute of Statistics. pp. 3–5. Retrieved 17 November 2018.
  2. ^ Crystal, David (March 2008). "Two thousand million?". English Today. 24: 3–6. doi:10.1017/S0266078408000023. S2CID 145597019.
  3. ^ Crystal, David (1988). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. Cambridge University Press. pp. 286–287. ISBN 978-0-521-26438-9.
  4. ^ a b "What are the top 200 most spoken languages?". Ethnologue. 2024. Retrieved 2024-08-15.
  5. ^ Arabic, Standard at Ethnologue (27th ed., 2024)  
  6. ^ a b "Most spoken languages in the World". The World Factbook. CIA. Retrieved 2022-01-01.