List of languages by total speakers


This page tries to present a list of languages by total native speakers.

Note, however, that 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 and the CIA World Factbook, the sources of the tables given below, consider 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.

The lists only take into account first-language (native) speakers. Counting second language speakers is extremely difficult and approximate at best.

Contents

Ethnologue estimates

The following data was collected in 1996, and should be considered out of date.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 these data.

  1. Mandarin (Chinese), 890 million
  2. Spanish, 330 million
  3. English, 320 million
  4. Bengali, 190 million
  5. Hindi, 180 million
  6. Portuguese, 170 million
  7. Russian, 170 million
  8. Japanese, 125 million
  9. German 120 million
  10. Wu (Chinese) 77 million
  11. Javanese 75 million
  12. Korean 75 million
  13. French 72 million
  14. Vietnamese 68 million
  15. Telugu 66 million
  16. Cantonese (Chinese) 66 million
  17. Marathi 65 million
  18. Tamil 63 million
  19. Turkish 59 million
  20. Urdu 58 million
  21. Italian 57 million
  22. Min Nan (Chinese) 49 million
  23. Jin (Chinese) 45 million
  24. Gujarati 44 million
  25. Polish 44 million
  26. Egyptian Arabic 43 million
  27. Ukrainian 41 million

Source: ethnologue (http://www.ethnologue.com)

CIA World Factbook estimates

The CIA World Factbook provides the following estimates of "first language" speakers for the year 2000.

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.

Chinese, Mandarin
Hindi
English
Spanish
Bengali
Russian
Portuguese
Japanese
German, Standard
Korean
French

14.37%
6.02%
5.61%
5.59%
3.4%
2.75%
2.63%
2.06%
1.64%
1.28%
1.27%

Source: factbook entry (http://cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/xx.html#People)

See also

External links

ast:Llista d'idiomes por númberu de falantes de:Liste von Sprachen nach der Zahl ihrer Muttersprachler eo:Listo de lingvoj laŭ parolantaro pt:Lista de línguas por total de falantes ru:Список языков, сортировка по численности говорящих sl:Seznam jezikov po številu govorcev sv:Lista över mest talade språk


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