List of languages by total speakers
This is a list of languages by total speakers (counting only "first language" speakers).
(2000 estimate)ยน
The following data was collected in 1996, and should be considered out of date. We are attempting to find a more recent source. Linked pages may not agree with data here because of differing sources. Rankings were removed from some linked pages because of ambiguity and the age of this data.
Lists such as this may vary somewhat depending upon the definition given to certain terms. In particular, the exact difference between "dialect" and "language" is often important. An example of where this can have an impact is the case of Arabic, which can be considered either a single language or a group of related languages. Ethnologue, the source of this table, considers it to be multiple languages, and it is therefore not listed here. If one chose to count it as a single language, however, it would appear in the top ten.
A similar situation occurs with Chinese. If all the varieties of Chinese are counted as a single language, then Chinese appears in first place with over 1.2 billion speakers. If counted separately, then five varieties of Chinese are found in the top 25.
This list only takes into account first-language (native) speakers. Counting second language speakers is extremely difficult and approximate at best.
- Mandarin (Chinese), 890 million
- Spanish, 330 million
- English, 320 million
- Bengali, 190 million
- Hindi, 180 million
- Portuguese, 170 million
- Russian, 170 million
- Japanese, 125 million
- German 120 million
- Wu (Chinese) 77 million
- Javanese 75 million
- Korean 75 million
- French 72 million
- Vietnamese 68 million
- Telugu 66 million
- Cantonese (Chinese) 66 million
- Marathi 65 million
- Tamil 63 million
- Turkish 59 million
- Urdu 58 million
- Italian 57 million
- Min Nan (Chinese) 49 million
- Jin (Chinese) 45 million
- Gujarati 44 million
- Polish 44 million
- Egyptian Arabic 43 million
- Ukrainian 41 million
Source:
See also
