Talk:List of languages by number of native speakers

This article is subject to repeated attempts at promoting particular languages. If you have a reliable source which disagrees with the numbers here, you can add it to "Other estimates". However, for the list as a whole we need a single source that covers all of these languages simultaneously; anything else would be inconsistent and lead to gaming the system. Unfortunately, there are not many good options to choose from.

This article was nominated for deletion on 5 January 2010. The result of the discussion was keep.

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Numbers Mashreqi Arabic/Eastern Arabic native speakers?[edit]

I have ben thinking about lately, and I am not speaking here about the number of speakers of Modern Standard Arabic, that indeed, the eastern Arabic languages/dialects are mutually intelligible. I see people from Egypt conversing with people from Syria without having any problem. Also, the Peninsular Arabic dialects ara intelligible with the languages in the eastern branch of the spoken Arabic language. Therefore, I disagree with this map: https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/btwej0/part_two_languages_that_are_secretly_different/ I do believe that Sudanese and Egyptian Arabic should be added to the Mashreqi Arabic language, since their speakers do not need to switch into Modern Standard Arabic, nor they need to necessarily have been previously exposed to the variety they are listening to. That is, a Sudanese speaker does not have any major problem understanding an iraqi speaker and viceversa. I am of course open to read about other people´s opinions, since the Arabic Dilectology is a topic that interests me a lot.

So, the number of native speakers of mashreqi Arabic would be 282 million, or 300 according to this link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mashriqi_Arabic, making it the fifth most spoken native language in the world. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.241.34.248 (talk) 09:47, 26 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

numbers Persian vs. Turkish[edit]

Everyone in Iran speaks Persian fluently. I am ethnically Azeri from Iran and I'd argue that most speak it even better than their supposed "native tongue" because it is the only language of education and many also prefer to use it in daily life. What is weird about that article is that for Turkish this differentiation wasn't done, and all Kurds, Laz, Zaza, etc. in Turkey were lumped together with the ethnic Turks, otherwise the number which is stated (84 million) makes no sense because there are by far not even 84 million Turks in the world. Why?

Furthermore it makes absolutely no sense that is was separately listed as "Iranian Persian" since all Persian variants are fully mutually intelligible. They are not separate languages. Only major difference is that in Tajikistan another script is used. In Iran and Afghanistan orthography, etc. is exactly the same. But still, even if an Iranian and a Tajik meet who were never exposed to each others dialects, everybody would understand each other with absolutely no problem. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 149.233.35.210 (talk) 23:51, 19 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Semi-protected edit request on 9 September 2023[edit]

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There is a typo in the first sentence; they likely meant to write “ranked,” not “raked.” 166.198.34.57 (talk) 18:31, 9 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed, thanks. Kanguole 19:03, 9 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Kannada is not yet ranked even wiki itself marked 60+ millions of speakers[edit]

Even Wiki page itself marks kannada speaking numbers are more than 60 million, kannada is not listed in the rank table in the page we are talking about. ಹಂಸರವಿನಿತ್ಯಾ (talk) 19:47, 18 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia is not considered a reliable source. This article builds on Ethnologue. If you think Ethnologue is incorrect, I agree with you - but the consensus is to use it as the source for this article. Jeppiz (talk) 20:00, 18 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

THIS ARTICLE IS NONSENSE : FRENCH SHOULD BE IN THE TOP 5 AND IS NOT EVEN LISTED HERE[edit]

https://www.berlitz.com/blog/most-spoken-languages-world

https://www.berlitz.com/blog/french-speaking-countries

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 2607:fa49:ce40:8d00:10af:8a10:ea09:916c (talk • contribs) 12:15, 9 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Even according to this source, French has "First language speakers: 79.9 million", which is less than several of the other languages listed, and some not listed. For comparisons of total speakers, see List of languages by total number of speakers. Kanguole 12:52, 9 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]