List of languages by number of native speakers
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Languages by number of native speakers
)
Human languages ranked by their number of
Arabic is sometimes considered a single language centred on Modern Standard Arabic, other authors consider its mutually unintelligible varieties separate languages.[3] Similarly, Chinese is sometimes viewed as a single language because of a shared culture and common literary language.[4] It is also common to describe various Chinese dialect groups, such as Mandarin, Wu and Yue, as languages, even though each of these groups contains many mutually unintelligible varieties.[5]
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 favour of a national language.[6]
Top languages by population
Ethnologue (2024)
The following languages are listed as having at least 50 million first-language speakers in the 26th edition of Ethnologue published in 2023.[7] This section does not include entries that Ethnologue identifies as macrolanguages encompassing all their respective varieties, such as Arabic, Lahnda, Persian, Malay, Pashto, and Chinese.
| Language | Native speakers (in millions) |
Language family | Branch |
|---|---|---|---|
Mandarin Chinese
|
941 | Sino-Tibetan | Sinitic |
Spanish
|
486 | Indo-European | Romance |
English
|
380 | Indo-European | Germanic |
Hindi
|
345 | Indo-European | Indo-Aryan |
Bengali
|
237 | Indo-European | Indo-Aryan |
Portuguese
|
236 | Indo-European | Romance |
Russian
|
148 | Indo-European | Balto-Slavic |
Japanese
|
123 | Japonic | Japanese |
Yue Chinese
|
86 | Sino-Tibetan | Sinitic |
Vietnamese
|
85 | Austroasiatic | Vietic |
Turkish
|
84 | Turkic | Oghuz |
Wu Chinese
|
83 | Sino-Tibetan | Sinitic |
Marathi
|
83 | Indo-European | Indo-Aryan |
Telugu
|
83 | Dravidian | South-Central |
Western Punjabi
|
82 | Indo-European | Indo-Aryan |
Korean
|
81 | Koreanic | — |
Tamil
|
79 | Dravidian | South |
Egyptian Arabic
|
78 | Afroasiatic | Semitic |
Standard German
|
76 | Indo-European | Germanic |
French
|
74 | Indo-European | Romance |
Urdu
|
70 | Indo-European | Indo-Aryan |
Javanese
|
68 | Austronesian | Malayo-Polynesian |
Italian
|
64 | Indo-European | Romance |
Iranian Persian
|
62 | Indo-European | Iranian |
Gujarati
|
58 | Indo-European | Indo-Aryan |
Hausa
|
54 | Afroasiatic | Chadic |
Bhojpuri
|
53 | Indo-European | Indo-Aryan |
Levantine Arabic
|
51 | Afroasiatic | Semitic |
Southern Min
|
51 | Sino-Tibetan | Sinitic |
CIA World Factbook (2018 estimates)
According to the CIA World Factbook, the most-spoken first languages in 2018 were:[8]
| Rank | Language | Percentage of world population (2018) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mandarin Chinese | 12.3% |
| 2 | Spanish | 6.0% |
| 3 | English | 5.1% |
| 3 | Arabic |
5.1% |
| 5 | Hindi |
3.5% |
| 6 | Bengali | 3.3% |
| 7 | Portuguese | 3.0% |
| 8 | Russian | 2.1% |
| 9 | Japanese | 1.7% |
| 10 | Western Punjabi | 1.3% |
| 11 | Javanese | 1.1% |
See also
- List of languages by total number of speakers
- List of sign languages by number of native signers
- List of languages by the number of countries in which they are recognized as an official language
- Number of languages by country
- Languages used on the Internet
- List of ISO 639-3 codes
- Lists of languages
- List of languages by number of speakers in Europe
- Global language system
- Linguistic diversity index
- World language
References
- ^ a b Paolillo, John C.; Das, Anupam (31 March 2006). "Evaluating language statistics: the Ethnologue and beyond" (PDF). UNESCO Institute of Statistics. pp. 3–5. Archived (PDF) from the original on 10 January 2017. Retrieved 17 November 2018.
- ISBN 978-0-521-59646-6.
- ISBN 978-0-415-05767-7.
- ISBN 978-0-521-29653-3.
- ISBN 978-0-7007-1129-1.
- ISBN 978-0-521-26438-9.
- ^ a b Statistics, in Eberhard, David M.; Simons, Gary F.; Fennig, Charles D., eds. (2024). Ethnologue: Languages of the World (27th ed.). Dallas, Texas: SIL International.
- ^ a b "The World Factbook. People and Society. Languages". The World Factbook. Central Intelligence Agency. 29 November 2023. Retrieved 30 November 2023.
External links
- "What are the top 200 most spoken languages? The Ethnologue 200". Ethnologue. SIL International. 2023. Retrieved 30 November 2023.
The Ethnologue 200 accounts for most of the world's population. Over 88% of people speak one of these languages as their native tongue, and many hundreds of millions more speak them as second languages. This ranking accounts for both, showing the total usage worldwide.