List of languages by number of native speakers: Difference between revisions

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This article ranks human languages by their number of native speakers.

However, all 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] For example, a language is often defined as a set of varieties that are mutually intelligible, but independent national standard languages may be considered to be separate languages even though they are largely mutually intelligible, as in the case of Danish and Norwegian.^[2] Conversely, many commonly accepted languages, including German, Italian and even English, encompass varieties that are not mutually intelligible.^[1]^{[better source needed]} While Arabic is sometimes considered a single language centred on Modern Standard Arabic, other authors describe its mutually unintelligible varieties as 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 Cantonese, 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 under-reported in favour of a national language.^[6]

Top languages by population

Ethnologue (2023, 26th edition)

The following languages are listed as having at least 50 million first-language speakers in the 2023 edition of Ethnologue.^[7]

Languages with at least 50 million first-language speakers^[7]
Language	Native speakers (millions)	Language family	Branch
Mandarin Chinese (incl. Standard Chinese, but excl. other varieties)	939	Sino-Tibetan	Sinitic
Spanish	485	Indo-European	Romance
English	380	Indo-European	Germanic
Hindi (excl. Urdu, and other languages)	345	Indo-European	Indo-Aryan
Portuguese	236	Indo-European	Romance
Bengali	234	Indo-European	Indo-Aryan
Russian	147	Indo-European	Balto-Slavic
Japanese	123	Japonic	Japanese
Cantonese	86.1	Sino-Tibetan	Sinitic
Vietnamese	85.0	Austroasiatic	Vietic
Turkish	84.0	Turkic	Oghuz
Wu Chinese (incl. Shanghainese)	83.4	Sino-Tibetan	Sinitic
Marathi	83.2	Indo-European	Indo-Aryan
Telugu	83.0	Dravidian	South-Central
Korean	81.7	Koreanic	—
French	80.8	Indo-European	Romance
Tamil	78.6	Dravidian	South
Egyptian Spoken Arabic (excl. Saʽidi Arabic)	77.4	Afroasiatic	Semitic
Standard German	75.3	Indo-European	Germanic
Urdu (excl. Hindi)	70.6	Indo-European	Indo-Aryan
Javanese	68.3	Austronesian	Malayo-Polynesian
Western Punjabi (excl. Eastern Punjabi)	66.7	Indo-European	Indo-Aryan
Italian	64.6	Indo-European	Romance
Gujarati	57.1	Indo-European	Indo-Aryan
Iranian Persian (excl. Dari and Tajik)	57.2	Indo-European	Iranian
Bhojpuri	52.3	Indo-European	Indo-Aryan
Hausa	51.7	Afroasiatic	Chadic

CIA (2018 estimates)

According to the CIA, the most-spoken first languages in 2018 were:^[8]

Top first languages by population per *CIA*^[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%

Notes

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. Retrieved 17 November 2018.
^ Chambers, J.K.; Trudgill, Peter (1998). Dialectology (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-59646-6.
^ Kaye, Alan S.; Rosenhouse, Judith (1997). "Arabic Dialects and Maltese". In Hetzron, Robert (ed.). The Semitic Languages. Routledge. pp. 263–311. ISBN 978-0-415-05767-7.
^ Norman, Jerry (1988). Chinese. Cambridge University Press. p. 2. ISBN 978-0-521-29653-3.
^ Norman, Jerry (2003). "The Chinese dialects: phonology". In Thurgood, Graham; LaPolla, Randy J. (eds.). The Sino-Tibetan languages. Routledge. pp. 72–83. ISBN 978-0-7007-1129-1.
^ Crystal, David (1988). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. Cambridge University Press. pp. 286–287. ISBN 978-0-521-26438-9.
^ ^a ^b Statistics, in Eberhard, David M.; Simons, Gary F.; Fennig, Charles D., eds. (2023). Ethnologue: Languages of the World (26th ed.). Dallas, Texas: SIL International.
^ ^a ^b "Most spoken languages in the World". Retrieved 1 January 2022.

External links

The Ethnologue's most recent list of languages by total number of speakers – this is not a list of native speakers
Languages Spoken by More Than 10 Million People (Archived 2009-10-31) – Encarta list, based on data from Ethnologue, but some figures (e.g. for Arabic) widely vary from it

[Paolillo&Das-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] Chambers, J.K.; Trudgill, Peter (1998). Dialectology (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-59646-6.

[3] Kaye, Alan S.; Rosenhouse, Judith (1997). "Arabic Dialects and Maltese". In Hetzron, Robert (ed.). The Semitic Languages. Routledge. pp. 263–311. ISBN 978-0-415-05767-7.

[4] Norman, Jerry (1988). Chinese. Cambridge University Press. p. 2. ISBN 978-0-521-29653-3.

[5] Norman, Jerry (2003). "The Chinese dialects: phonology". In Thurgood, Graham; LaPolla, Randy J. (eds.). The Sino-Tibetan languages. Routledge. pp. 72–83. ISBN 978-0-7007-1129-1.

[6] Crystal, David (1988). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. Cambridge University Press. pp. 286–287. ISBN 978-0-521-26438-9.

[e26-7] Statistics, in Eberhard, David M.; Simons, Gary F.; Fennig, Charles D., eds. (2023). Ethnologue: Languages of the World (26th ed.). Dallas, Texas: SIL International.

[CIA-8] "Most spoken languages in the World". Retrieved 1 January 2022.

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