List Of Languages By Total Speakers

This page attempts 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. The World Almanac, the CIA World Factbook, and Ethnologue, the sources of the tables given below, consider the varieties of Arabic to be separate languages. If the spoken varieties listed by Ethnologue are considered as forms of a single Arabic language, it appears in fourth place with about 215 million speakers. 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. Note that these lists only take into account first-language (native) speakers. Counting second language speakers is extremely difficult and approximate at best.

World Almanac estimates (2005)

The World Almanac 2005 estimates for first language speakers are as follows:
  1. Mandarin Chinese 1.75 billion
  2. English 514 million
  3. Hindustani 496 million
  4. Spanish 425 million
  5. Russian 275 million
  6. Arabic 256 million
  7. Bengali 215 million
  8. Portuguese 194 million
  9. Malay-Indonesian 176 million
  10. French 129 million

CIA World Factbook estimates (2000)

The CIA World Factbook provides the following estimates of "first language" speakers for the year 2000 (percentage of world population; CIA's 2000 estimate for world population was 6.081 billion http://www.umsl.edu/services/govdocs/wofact2000/geos/xx.html).
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11. 		Chinese, Mandarin
Hindi
English
Spanish
Bengali
Portuguese
Russian
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: CIA - The World Factbook -- World

Ethnologue estimates (1999)

The following table is based largely on a list of the world's top 100 languages published by Ethnologue in 1999. http://web.archive.org/web/19990429232804/www.sil.org/ethnologue/top100.html Many of the estimates are for years prior to 1999. Notes indicate where information in the current table differs from Ethnologue's estimates. The original Ethnologue list included Serbo-Croatian with 21 million speakers.
Order number and language Countries and/or regions with more than 1% as native speakers Total number of native speakers (million)
 1. Mandarin Chinese Brunei, Cambodia, Canada, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mongolia, Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, Taiwan, Thailand 885
 2. Spanish Algeria, Andorra, Argentina, Belize, Benin, Bolivia, Chad, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Guatemala, Honduras, Cte d'Ivoire, Madagascar, Mali, Mexico, Morocco, Nicaragua, Niger, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Spain, Togo, Tunisia, United States, Uruguay, Venezuela 332
 3. English Australia, Belize, Botswana, Brunei, Cameroon, Canada, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Fiji, Gambia, Guyana, India, Ireland, Israel, Lesotho, Liberia, Malaysia, Micronesia, Namibia, Nauru, New Zealand, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Samoa, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Solomon Islands, Somalia, South Africa, Suriname, Swaziland, Tonga, United Kingdom, United States, Vanuatu, Zimbabwe 322
 4. Arabic1 Egypt, Sudan, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Jordan, Yemen, United Arab Emirates, Oman, Iraq, Lebanon, Israel 2151
 5. Bengali Bangladesh, India, Singapore 189
 6. Hindi India, Nepal, Singapore, South Africa, Uganda 182
 7. Portuguese Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, France, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Portugal, So Tom e Prncipe 170
 8. Russian China, Israel, Mongolia, Russia, United States, all of the former Soviet Republics 170
 9. Japanese Japan, Singapore 125
 10. German Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Kazakstan, Liechtenstein, Luxemburg, Paraguay, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Switzerland, United States 120
11. Wu China 77.2
12. Javanese Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore 75.5
13. Korean China, Japan, North Korea, South Korea, Singapore, Kazakstan, Vietnam, United States,Uzbekistan Thailand 75
14. French Algeria, Andorra, Belgium, Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Chad, Comoros, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, France, Gabon, Guinea, Haiti, Cte d'Ivoire, Laos, Lebanon, Luxemburg, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritania, Monaco, Morocco, Niger, Rwanda, Senegal, Seychelles, Switzerland, Togo, Tunisia, Vanuatu, Vietnam 72
15. Turkish2 Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece, Republic of Macedonia, Romania, Turkey, Uzbekistan 67.72
16. Marathi India 71.8
17. Telugu India, Singapore 66.4
18. Cantonese (Yue) Brunei, Canada, China, Costa Rica, Indonesia, Malaysia, Panama, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam 66
19.Vietnamese Cambodia, China, United States, Vietnam 67.7
20. Tamil India, Malaysia, Mauritius, Singapore, South Africa, Sri Lanka 63.1
21. Italian3 Canada, Croatia, Eritrea, France, Italy, San Marino, Slovenia, Switzerland 593
22. Urdu Afghanistan, India, Mauritius, Pakistan, South Africa, Thailand 58
23. Punjabi4 India, Pakistan, Kenya, Singapore 564
24. Min Nan Brunei, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand 49
25. Jinyu China 45
26. Gujarati India, Kenya, Pakistan, Singapore, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe 44
27. Polish Czech Republic, Germany, Israel, Poland, Romania, Slovakia 44
28. Ukrainian Poland, Slovakia, Ukraine, Russia 41
29. Persian5 Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Oman, Qatar, Tajikistan, United Arab Emirates 31.35
30. Xiang China 36
31. Malayalam India, Singapore 34
32. Hakka Brunei, China, Malaysia, Taiwan, Thailand 34
33. Kannada India 33.7
34. Oriya India 31
35. Sunda Indonesia 27
36. Romanian Hungary, Israel, Moldova, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro, Ukraine 26
37. Bhojpuri India, Mauritius, Nepal 25
38. South Azerbaijani Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey 24.4
39. Maithili India, Nepal 24.3
40. Hausa Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ghana, Niger, Nigeria, Sudan, Togo 24.2
41. Burmese Bangladesh, Myanmar 22
42. Gan China 20.6
43. Awadhi India, Nepal 20.5
44. Thai Singapore, Thailand 20
45. Dutch Netherlands, Surinam 20
46. Yoruba Benin, Nigeria 20
47. Sindhi Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Singapore 19.7
Source: Ethnologue

Notes

Note 1: Ethnologue does not consider Standard Arabic (Fusha) to be a "mother tongue", i.e. a language with native speakers http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=ABV. It counts each of the spoken varieties of Arabic as a separate language. The sum of Ethnologue's estimates of native speakers of all of the spoken varieties of Arabic is about 215 million. The variety with the largest estimate is Egyptian Spoken Arabic with 42.5 million speakers, followed by Algerian Spoken Arabic with 22.4 million speakers. Note 2: Ethnologue gives an estimate of 59 million for Turkish. Note 3: Ethnologue estimates 37 million for Italian. It limits its definition of Italian to the standard language and considers Venetian, Sicilian etc. to be separate languages. Note 4: Punjabi is separated into two languages by Ethnologue: Western Punjabi (30,000,000) and Eastern Punjabi (26,013,000). Note 5: Ethnologue splits Persian (Farsi) into two languages: Eastern Farsi (7 million) and Western Farsi (24.28 million).

See also

External links

*Total speakers

 

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