List of languages by total number of speakers

For first-language speakers only, see List of languages by number of native speakers.

This is a list of languages by total number of speakers.

Principal language families of the world (and in some cases geographic groups of families). For greater detail, see Distribution of languages in the world.

It is difficult to define what constitutes a language as opposed to a dialect. For example, Chinese and Arabic are sometimes considered single languages, but each includes several mutually unintelligible varieties, and so they are sometimes considered language families instead. Conversely, colloquial registers of Hindi and Urdu are almost completely mutually intelligible, and are sometimes classified as one language, Hindustani. 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]

There is no single criterion for how much knowledge is sufficient to be counted as a second-language speaker. For example, English has about 450 million native speakers but, depending on the criterion chosen, can be said to have as many as two billion speakers.^[2]

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 favor of a national language.^[3]

Ethnologue (2024)

Ethnologue lists the following languages as having 50 million or more total speakers.^[4] This section does not include entries that Ethnologue identifies as macrolanguages encompassing several varieties, such as Arabic, Lahnda, Persian, Malay, Pashto, and Chinese.

Most spoken languages, Ethnologue, 2024^[4]

Language	Family	Branch	First-language (L1) speakers	Second-language (L2) speakers	Total speakers (L1+L2)
English (excl. creole languages)	Indo-European	Germanic	380 million	1.135 billion	1.515 billion
Mandarin Chinese (incl. Standard Chinese, but excl. other varieties)	Sino-Tibetan	Sinitic	941 million	199 million	1.140 billion
Hindi (excl. Urdu)	Indo-European	Indo-Aryan	345 million	264 million	609 million
Spanish (excl. creole languages)	Indo-European	Romance	486 million	74 million	560 million
Modern Standard Arabic (excl. dialects)	Afro-Asiatic	Semitic	0[lower-alpha 1]	332 million	332 million
French (excl. creole languages)	Indo-European	Romance	74 million	238 million	312 million
Bengali	Indo-European	Indo-Aryan	237 million	41 million	278 million
Portuguese (excl. creole languages)	Indo-European	Romance	236 million	27 million	264 million
Russian	Indo-European	Balto-Slavic	148 million	108 million	255 million
Urdu (excl. Hindi)	Indo-European	Indo-Aryan	70 million	168 million	238 million
Indonesian [6] (excl. other Malay)	Austronesian	Malayo-Polynesian	55 million	270 million	325 million
Standard German	Indo-European	Germanic	76 million	58 million	134 million
Japanese	Japonic	—	123 million	<1 million	123 million
Nigerian Pidgin	English Creole	Krio	5 million	116 million	121 million
Egyptian Arabic (excl. other Arabic dialects)	Afro-Asiatic	Semitic	78 million	25 million	103 million
Marathi	Indo-European	Indo-Aryan	83 million	16 million	99 million
Telugu	Dravidian	South-Central	83 million	13 million	96 million
Turkish	Turkic	Oghuz	84 million	6 million	90 million
Hausa	Afro-Asiatic	Chadic	54 million	34 million	88 million
Tamil	Dravidian	Southern	79 million	8 million	87 million
Yue Chinese (incl. Cantonese)	Sino-Tibetan	Sinitic	86 million	1 million	87 million
Swahili	Niger–Congo	Bantu	3 million	83 million	87 million
Vietnamese	Austroasiatic	Vietic	85 million	1 million	86 million
Wu Chinese (incl. Shanghainese)	Sino-Tibetan	Sinitic	83 million	<1 million	83 million
Tagalog[lower-alpha 2]	Austronesian	Malayo-Polynesian	29 million	54 million	83 million
Western Punjabi (excl. Eastern Punjabi)	Indo-European	Indo-Aryan	—	—	82 million
Korean	Koreanic	—	81 million	<1 million	81 million
Iranian Persian (excl. other Persian dialects)	Indo-European	Iranian	62 million	17 million	78 million
Javanese	Austronesian	Malayo-Polynesian	—	—	68 million
Italian	Indo-European	Romance	64 million	3 million	67 million
Gujarati	Indo-European	Indo-Aryan	58 million	5 million	63 million
Thai	Kra–Dai	Zhuang–Tai	21 million	40 million	61 million
Amharic	Afro-Asiatic	Semitic	35 million	25 million	60 million
Kannada	Dravidian	Southern	44 million	15 million	59 million
Levantine Arabic (excl. other Arabic dialects)	Afro-Asiatic	Semitic	51 million	2 million	54 million
Bhojpuri	Indo-European	Indo-Aryan	53 million	<1 million	53 million
Min Nan Chinese (incl. Hokkien)	Sino-Tibetan	Sinitic	51 million	<1 million	51 million

The World Factbook (2022)

The World Factbook, produced by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), estimates the ten most spoken languages (L1 + L2) in 2022 as follows:^[7]

Most spoken languages, CIA, 2022^[7]

Language	Percentage of world population (2022)
English	18.8%
Mandarin Chinese	13.8%
Hindi	7.5%
Spanish	6.9%
French	3.4%
Arabic	3.4%
Bengali	3.4%
Russian	3.2%
Portuguese	3.2%
Urdu	2.9%

See also

• Lingua franca
• Lists of languages
• List of languages by number of native speakers
• List of languages by the number of countries in which they are recognized as an official language
• Number of languages by country
• World language
• Languages used on the Internet
• Extinct language
• Official languages of the United Nations
• Geolinguistics
• Language geography

Explanatory notes

1. Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) is not an L1. Arabic speakers first learn their respective local dialect. MSA is acquired through formal education.^[5]
2. Tagalog and Filipino are defined as two different languages in the ISO 639 standard. Ethnologue considers that Filipino is a standardized variety of the Tagalog language with no speakers.

References

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. Crystal, David (March 2008). "Two thousand million?". English Today. 24: 3–6. doi:10.1017/S0266078408000023. S2CID 145597019.
3. Crystal, David (1988). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. Cambridge University Press. pp. 286–287. ISBN 978-0-521-26438-9.
4. "What are the top 200 most spoken languages?". Ethnologue. 2024. Retrieved 2024-08-15.
5. Arabic, Standard at Ethnologue (27th ed., 2024)
6. https://ugm.ac.id/id/berita/22527-penutur-bahasa-indonesia-capai-300-juta-jiwa
7. "Most spoken languages in the World". The World Factbook. CIA. Retrieved 2022-01-01.