List of languages by total number of speakers

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

A number of sources have compiled lists of languages by their number of speakers. However, all such lists should be used with caution.

Ethnologue (2015, 18th edition)

The following languages are listed as having 50 million or more native speakers in the 2015 edition of Ethnologue, a language reference published by SIL International.[2] Speaker totals are generally not reliable, as they add together estimates from different dates and (usually uncited) sources; language information is not collected on most national censuses.

Rank Language Family L1 speakers L1 Rank L2 speakers Total
1 Mandarin Chinese (incl. Standard Chinese) Sino-Tibetan, Chinese 900 million 1 190 million 1,090 million
2 English Indo-European, Germanic 339 million 3 603 million 942 million
3 Spanish Indo-European, Romance 472 million 2 94 million 570 million
4 Arabic Afro-Asiatic, Semitic 295 million 4 90 million 385 million
5 Hindi [Note 1] Indo-European, Indo-Aryan 260 million (2001) 5 120 million (1999) 380 million
6 Russian Indo-European, Slavic 150 million (2010) 8 110 million (2010) 260 million
7 Bengali Indo-European, Indo-Aryan 205 million (2011) 7 19 million in Bangladesh (2011) 224 million
8 Portuguese Indo-European, Romance 215 million (2010) 6 35 million (2012) 250 million
9 Malay (incl. Indonesian and Malaysian) Austronesian, Malayo-Polynesian 77 million (no date) 14 173 million (2010) 250 million
10 French Indo-European, Romance 80 million (2015) 17 140 million (2015) 220 million[4]
11 German Indo-European, Germanic 95 million (2014) 11 115 million 210 million
12 Urdu Indo-European, Indo-Aryan 68 million (2007) 21 94 million (1999) 162 million
13 Punjabi Indo-European, Indo-Aryan 146 million[5] 10 ? 146 million
14 Japanese Japonic 130 million 9 0.0115 million (2010)[6] 130 million
15 Persian (Farsi) Indo-European, Iranian 60 million (2009) 29 50 million[7] 110 million[7]
16 Swahili Niger–Congo language, Coastal Tanzanian, Bantu 16 million ? 82 million 98 million
17 Tamil (incl. Tamil languages) Dravidian 80 million (2011) 20 12 million in India (2011) 92 million
18 Italian Indo-European, Romance 65 million (2015) 23 20 million (2015) 85 million
19 Javanese Austronesian, Malayo-Polynesian 84 million (2000) 12 ? 84 million
20 Telugu Dravidian 74 million (2001) 15 5 million in India 79 million
21 Korean Koreanic 77 million (20082010) 17 ? 77 million
22 Wu Chinese (incl. Shanghainese) Sino-Tibetan, Chinese 77 million (1984) 13 77 million
23 Marathi Indo-European, Indo-Aryan 72 million (2001) 19 3 million in India (no date) 75 million
24 Turkish Turkic, Oghuz 71 million (2006) 22 0.3 million in Turkey 71 million
25 Vietnamese Austroasiatic, Viet–Muong 78 million 16 ? 78 million
26 Yue Chinese (incl. Cantonese) Sino-Tibetan, Chinese 62 million (1984–2006) 24 ? 62 million

Hausa has 25 million L1 total and 15 million L2 in Nigeria, and so approaches our limit of 50 million. Coastal Swahili has 15 million L1 in Tanzania (2012) and "probably over 80% of rural" Tanzania as L2, not counting Kenya or the 10 million L2 speakers of Congo Swahili (1999), so it also approaches our limit.

See also

Notes

  1. Refers to only Modern Standard Hindi here. The Census of India defines Hindi on a loose and broad basis. In addition to Standard Hindi, it incorporates a set of other Indo-Aryan languages written in Devanagari script including Awadhi, Bhojpuri, Haryanvi, Dhundhari etc. under Hindi group which have more than 422 million native speakers as on 2001.[3] However, the census also acknowledges Standard Hindi, the above mentioned languages and others as separate mother tongues of Hindi language and provides individual figures for all these languages.[3]

References

  1. Crystal, David (March 2008). "Two thousand million?". English Today. doi:10.1017/S0266078408000023.
  2. "Summary by language size". Ethnologue. Retrieved 2016-04-06.
  3. 1 2 Abstract of speakers' strength of languages and mother tongues – 2000, Census of India, 2001
  4. affairs, The French Ministry of Foreign. "The status of French in the world". France Diplomatie :: Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Development. Retrieved 2016-06-15.
  5. Lahnda/Western Punjabi 116.6 million Pakistan (2014?). Eastern Punjabi: 28.2 million India (2001), other countries: 1.1 million. Ethnologue 19.
  6. "Japanese". Ethnologue. Retrieved 2016-03-07.
  7. 1 2 Windfuhr, Gernot: The Iranian Languages, Routledge 2009, p. 418.

External links

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