List of languages by number of native speakers

This article ranks human languages by their number of native speakers.

Current distribution of human language families

However, all 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] For example, a language is often defined as a set of varieties that are mutually intelligible, but independent national standard languages may be considered to be separate languages even though they are largely mutually intelligible, as in the case of Danish and Norwegian.[2] Conversely, many commonly accepted languages, including German, Italian and even English, encompass varieties that are not mutually intelligible.[1] While Arabic is sometimes considered a single language centred on Modern Standard Arabic, other authors describe its mutually unintelligible varieties as separate languages.[3] Similarly, Chinese is sometimes viewed as a single language because of a shared culture and common literary language.[4] It is also common to describe various Chinese dialect groups, such as Mandarin, Wu and Yue, as languages, even though each of these groups contains many mutually unintelligible varieties.[5]

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 under-reported in favour of a national language.[6]

Top languages by population

Ethnologue (2019, 22nd edition)

The following languages are listed as having at least 10 million first language speakers in the 2019 edition of Ethnologue, a language reference published by SIL International, which is based in the United States.[7]

Languages with at least 10 million first-language speakers[7]
Rank	Language	Speakers (millions)	Percentage of world pop. (March 2019)[8]	Language family	Branch
1	Mandarin Chinese	918	11.922%	Sino-Tibetan	Sinitic
2	Spanish	480	5.994%	Indo-European	Romance
3	English	379	4.922%	Indo-European	Germanic
4	Hindi (sanskritised Hindustani)[9]	341	4.429%	Indo-European	Indo-Aryan
5	Bengali	228	2.961%	Indo-European	Indo-Aryan
6	Portuguese	221	2.870%	Indo-European	Romance
7	Russian	154	2.000%	Indo-European	Balto-Slavic
8	Japanese	128	1.662%	Japonic	Japanese
9	Western Punjabi[10]	92.7	1.204%	Indo-European	Indo-Aryan
10	Marathi	83.1	1.079%	Indo-European	Indo-Aryan
11	Telugu	82.0	1.065%	Dravidian	South-Central
12	Wu Chinese	81.4	1.057%	Sino-Tibetan	Sinitic
13	Turkish	79.4	1.031%	Turkic	Oghuz
14	Korean	77.3	1.004%	Koreanic	language isolate
15	French	77.2	1.003%	Indo-European	Romance
16	German (only Standard German)	76.1	0.988%	Indo-European	Germanic
17	Vietnamese	76.0	0.987%	Austroasiatic	Vietic
18	Tamil	75.0	0.974%	Dravidian	South
19	Yue Chinese	73.1	0.949%	Sino-Tibetan	Sinitic
20	Urdu (persianised Hindustani)[9]	68.6	0.891%	Indo-European	Indo-Aryan
21	Javanese	68.3	0.887%	Austronesian	Malayo-Polynesian
22	Italian	64.8	0.842%	Indo-European	Romance
23	Egyptian Arabic	64.6	0.839%	Afroasiatic	Semitic
24	Gujarati	56.4	0.732%	Indo-European	Indo-Aryan
25	Iranian Persian	52.8	0.686%	Indo-European	Iranian
26	Bhojpuri	52.2	0.678%	Indo-European	Indo-Aryan
27	Min Nan Chinese	50.1	0.651%	Sino-Tibetan	Sinitic
28	Hakka Chinese	48.2	0.626%	Sino-Tibetan	Sinitic
29	Jin Chinese	46.9	0.609%	Sino-Tibetan	Sinitic
30	Hausa	43.9	0.570%	Afroasiatic	Chadic
31	Kannada	43.6	0.566%	Dravidian	South
32	Indonesian (Indonesian Malay)	43.4	0.564%	Austronesian	Malayo-Polynesian
33	Polish	39.7	0.516%	Indo-European	Balto-Slavic
34	Yoruba	37.8	0.491%	Niger–Congo	Volta–Niger
35	Xiang Chinese	37.3	0.484%	Sino-Tibetan	Sinitic
36	Malayalam	37.1	0.482%	Dravidian	South
37	Odia	34.5	0.448%	Indo-European	Indo-Aryan
38	Maithili	33.9	0.440%	Indo-European	Indo-Aryan
39	Burmese	32.9	0.427%	Sino-Tibetan	Lolo-Burmese
40	Eastern Punjabi[10]	32.6	0.423%	Indo-European	Indo-Aryan
41	Sunda	32.4	0.421%	Austronesian	Malayo-Polynesian
42	Sudanese Arabic	31.9	0.414%	Afroasiatic	Semitic
43	Algerian Arabic	29.4	0.382%	Afroasiatic	Semitic
44	Moroccan Arabic	27.5	0.357%	Afroasiatic	Semitic
45	Ukrainian	27.3	0.355%	Indo-European	Balto-Slavic
46	Igbo	27.0	0.351%	Niger–Congo	Volta–Niger
47	Northern Uzbek	25.1	0.326%	Turkic	Karluk
48	Sindhi	24.6	0.319%	Indo-European	Indo-Aryan
49	North Levantine Arabic	24.6	0.319%	Afroasiatic	Semitic
50	Romanian	24.3	0.316%	Indo-European	Romance
51	Tagalog	23.6	0.306%	Austronesian	Malayo-Polynesian
52	Dutch	23.1	0.300%	Indo-European	Germanic
53	Saʽidi Arabic	22.4	0.291%	Afroasiatic	Semitic
54	Gan Chinese	22.1	0.287%	Sino-Tibetan	Sinitic
55	Amharic	21.9	0.284%	Afroasiatic	Semitic
56	Northern Pashto	20.9	0.271%	Indo-European	Iranian
57	Magahi	20.7	0.269%	Indo-European	Indo-Aryan
58	Thai	20.7	0.269%	Kra–Dai	Tai
59	Saraiki	20.0	0.260%	Indo-European	Indo-Aryan
60	Khmer	16.6	0.216%	Austroasiatic	Khmer
61	Chhattisgarhi	16.3	0.212%	Indo-European	Indo-Aryan
62	Somali	16.2	0.210%	Afroasiatic	Cushitic
63	Malaysian (Malaysian Malay)	16.1	0.209%	Austronesian	Malayo-Polynesian
64	Cebuano	15.9	0.206%	Austronesian	Malayo-Polynesian
65	Nepali	15.8	0.205%	Indo-European	Indo-Aryan
66	Mesopotamian Arabic	15.7	0.204%	Afroasiatic	Semitic
67	Assamese	15.3	0.199%	Indo-European	Indo-Aryan
68	Sinhalese	15.3	0.199%	Indo-European	Indo-Aryan
69	Northern Kurdish	14.6	0.190%	Indo-European	Iranian
70	Hejazi Arabic	14.5	0.188%	Afroasiatic	Semitic
71	Nigerian Fulfulde	14.5	0.188%	Niger–Congo	Senegambian
72	Bavarian	14.1	0.183%	Indo-European	Germanic
73	South Azerbaijani	13.8	0.179%	Turkic	Oghuz
74	Greek	13.1	0.170%	Indo-European	Hellenic
75	Chittagonian	13.0	0.169%	Indo-European	Indo-Aryan
76	Kazakh	12.9	0.168%	Turkic	Kipchak
77	Deccan	12.8	0.166%	Indo-European	Indo-Aryan
78	Hungarian	12.6	0.164%	Uralic	Ugric
79	Kinyarwanda	12.1	0.157%	Niger–Congo	Bantu
80	Zulu	12.1	0.157%	Niger–Congo	Bantu
81	South Levantine Arabic	11.6	0.151%	Afroasiatic	Semitic
82	Tunisian Arabic	11.6	0.151%	Afroasiatic	Semitic
83	Sanaani Spoken Arabic	11.4	0.148%	Afroasiatic	Semitic
84	Min Bei Chinese	11.0	0.143%	Sino-Tibetan	Sinitic
85	Southern Pashto	10.9	0.142%	Indo-European	Iranian
86	Rundi	10.8	0.140%	Niger–Congo	Bantu
87	Czech	10.7	0.139%	Indo-European	Balto-Slavic
88	Taʽizzi-Adeni Arabic	10.5	0.136%	Afroasiatic	Semitic
89	Uyghur	10.4	0.135%	Turkic	Karluk
90	Min Dong Chinese	10.3	0.134%	Sino-Tibetan	Sinitic
91	Sylheti	10.3	0.134%	Indo-European	Indo-Aryan

Nationalencyklopedin (2010)

The following table contains the top 100 languages by estimated number of native speakers in the 2007 edition of the Swedish encyclopedia Nationalencyklopedin. As census methods in different countries vary to a considerable extent, and given that some countries do not record language in their censuses, any list of languages by native speakers, or total speakers, is effectively based on estimates. Updated estimates from 2010 are also provided.[11]

The top eleven languages have additional figures from the 2010 edition of the Nationalencyklopedin. Numbers above 95 million are rounded off to the nearest 5 million.

Top languages by population per *Nationalencyklopedin*
Rank	Language	Native speakers in millions 2007 (2010)	Percentage of world population (2007)
1	Mandarin (entire branch)	935 (955)	14.1%
2	Spanish	390 (405)	5.85%
3	English	365 (360)	5.52%
4	Hindi[lower-alpha 1]	295 (310)	4.46%
5	Arabic	280 (295)	4.23%
6	Portuguese	205 (215)	3.08%
7	Bengali	200 (205)	3.05%
8	Russian	160 (155)	2.42%
9	Japanese	125 (125)	1.92%
10	Punjabi	95 (100)	1.44%
11	German	92 (95)	1.39%
12	Javanese	82	1.25%
13	Wu (inc. Shanghainese)	80	1.20%
14	Malay (inc. Indonesian and Malaysian)	77	1.16%
15	Telugu	76	1.15%
16	Vietnamese	76	1.14%
17	Korean	76	1.14%
18	French	75	1.12%
19	Marathi	73	1.10%
20	Tamil	70	1.06%
21	Urdu	66	0.99%
22	Turkish	63	0.95%
23	Italian	59	0.90%
24	Yue (inc. Cantonese)	59	0.89%
25	Thai	56	0.85%
26	Gujarati	49	0.74%
27	Jin	48	0.72%
28	Southern Min (inc. Hokkien and Teochew)	47	0.71%
29	Persian	45	0.68%
30	Polish	40	0.61%
31	Pashto	39	0.58%
32	Kannada	38	0.58%
33	Xiang	38	0.58%
34	Malayalam	38	0.57%
35	Sundanese	38	0.57%
36	Hausa	34	0.52%
37	Odia (Oriya)	33	0.50%
38	Burmese	33	0.50%
39	Hakka	31	0.46%
40	Ukrainian	30	0.46%
41	Bhojpuri	29[lower-alpha 2]	0.43%
42	Tagalog (Filipino)	28	0.42%
43	Yoruba	28	0.42%
44	Maithili	27[lower-alpha 2]	0.41%
45	Uzbek	26	0.39%
46	Sindhi	26	0.39%
47	Amharic	25	0.37%
48	Fula	24	0.37%
49	Romanian	24	0.37%
50	Oromo	24	0.36%
51	Igbo	24	0.36%
52	Azerbaijani	23	0.34%
53	Awadhi	22[lower-alpha 2]	0.33%
54	Gan	22	0.33%
55	Cebuano (Visayan)	21	0.32%
56	Dutch	21	0.32%
57	Kurdish	21	0.31%
58	Serbo-Croatian	19	0.28%
59	Malagasy	18	0.28%
60	Saraiki	17[lower-alpha 3]	0.26%
61	Nepali	17	0.25%
62	Sinhala	16	0.25%
63	Chittagonian	16	0.24%
64	Zhuang	16	0.24%
65	Khmer	16	0.24%
66	Turkmen	16	0.24%
67	Assamese	15	0.23%
68	Madurese	15	0.23%
69	Somali	15	0.22%
70	Marwari	14[lower-alpha 2]	0.21%
71	Magahi	14[lower-alpha 2]	0.21%
72	Haryanvi	14[lower-alpha 2]	0.21%
73	Hungarian	13	0.19%
74	Chhattisgarhi	12[lower-alpha 2]	0.19%
75	Greek	12	0.18%
76	Chewa	12	0.17%
77	Deccan	11	0.17%
78	Akan	11	0.17%
79	Kazakh	11	0.17%
80	Northern Min	10.9	0.16%
81	Sylheti	10.7	0.16%
82	Zulu	10.4	0.16%
83	Czech	10.0	0.15%
84	Kinyarwanda	9.8	0.15%
85	Dhundhari	9.6[lower-alpha 2]	0.15%
86	Haitian Creole	9.6	0.15%
87	Eastern Min (inc. Fuzhou dialect)	9.5	0.14%
88	Ilocano	9.1	0.14%
89	Quechua	8.9	0.13%
90	Kirundi	8.8	0.13%
91	Swedish	8.7	0.13%
92	Hmong	8.4	0.13%
93	Shona	8.3	0.13%
94	Uyghur	8.2	0.12%
95	Hiligaynon/Ilonggo (Visayan)	8.2	0.12%
96	Mossi	7.6	0.11%
97	Xhosa	7.6	0.11%
98	Belarusian	7.6[lower-alpha 4]	0.11%
99	Balochi	7.6	0.11%
100	Konkani	7.4	0.11%
Total		5,610	85%

Charts and graphs

Bubble chart of languages by proportion of native speakers worldwide[11]
Languages with at least 50 million first-language speakers, millions (according to: Ethnologue[13])

Notes

Refers to only Modern Standard Hindi here. The Census of India defines Hindi on a loose and broad basis. It does not include the entire Hindustani language, only the Hindi register of it. 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 of 2001.[12] However, the census also acknowledges Standard Hindi, the above mentioned languages and others as separate mother tongues of the Hindi language and provides individual figures for all these languages.[12]
This is only a fraction of total speakers; others are counted under "Hindi" as they regard their language a Hindi dialect.
Numbers may also be counted in Punjabi above
Only half this many use Belarusian as their home language.

References

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.
Chambers, J.K.; Trudgill, Peter (1998). Dialectology (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-59646-6.
Kaye, Alan S.; Rosenhouse, Judith (1997). "Arabic Dialects and Maltese". In Hetzron, Robert (ed.). The Semitic Languages. Routledge. pp. 263–311. ISBN 978-0-415-05767-7.
Norman, Jerry (1988). Chinese. Cambridge University Press. p. 2. ISBN 978-0-521-29653-3.
Norman, Jerry (2003). "The Chinese dialects: phonology". In Thurgood, Graham; LaPolla, Randy J. (eds.). The Sino-Tibetan languages. Routledge. pp. 72–83. ISBN 978-0-7007-1129-1.
Crystal, David (1988). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. Cambridge University Press. pp. 286–287. ISBN 978-0-521-26438-9.
"Summary by language size". Ethnologue. Retrieved 12 March 2019. For items below #26, see individual Ethnologue entry for each language.
"World Population Clock: 7.7 Billion People (2019) - Worldometers". www.worldometers.info. Retrieved 31 March 2019.
Hindi and Urdu are often classified as standardized registers of a single Hindustani language.
Defined at the national border with different writing systems rather than by language
Mikael Parkvall, "Världens 100 största språk 2007" (The World's 100 Largest Languages in 2007), in Nationalencyklopedin. Asterisks mark the 2010 estimates for the top dozen languages.
Abstract of speakers' strength of languages and mother tongues – 2000, Census of India, 2001
Summary by language size

External links

The Ethnologue's most recent list of languages by number of speakers
Languages Spoken by More Than 10 Million People (Archived 2009-10-31) – Encarta list, based on data from Ethnologue, but some figures (e.g. for Arabic) widely vary from it
Map of World Languages. Download of MP3 audio files in 1600 language combinations.

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.

[13] Refers to only Modern Standard Hindi here. The Census of India defines Hindi on a loose and broad basis. It does not include the entire Hindustani language, only the Hindi register of it. 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 of 2001.[12] However, the census also acknowledges Standard Hindi, the above mentioned languages and others as separate mother tongues of the Hindi language and provides individual figures for all these languages.[12]

[Hindi-14] This is only a fraction of total speakers; others are counted under "Hindi" as they regard their language a Hindi dialect.

[15] Numbers may also be counted in Punjabi above

[16] Only half this many use Belarusian as their home language.

[Paolillo&Das-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] Chambers, J.K.; Trudgill, Peter (1998). Dialectology (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-59646-6.

[3] Kaye, Alan S.; Rosenhouse, Judith (1997). "Arabic Dialects and Maltese". In Hetzron, Robert (ed.). The Semitic Languages. Routledge. pp. 263–311. ISBN 978-0-415-05767-7.

[4] Norman, Jerry (1988). Chinese. Cambridge University Press. p. 2. ISBN 978-0-521-29653-3.

[5] Norman, Jerry (2003). "The Chinese dialects: phonology". In Thurgood, Graham; LaPolla, Randy J. (eds.). The Sino-Tibetan languages. Routledge. pp. 72–83. ISBN 978-0-7007-1129-1.

[6] Crystal, David (1988). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. Cambridge University Press. pp. 286–287. ISBN 978-0-521-26438-9.

[:0-7] "Summary by language size". Ethnologue. Retrieved 12 March 2019. For items below #26, see individual Ethnologue entry for each language.

[8] "World Population Clock: 7.7 Billion People (2019) - Worldometers". www.worldometers.info. Retrieved 31 March 2019.

[hindi-urdu-9] Hindi and Urdu are often classified as standardized registers of a single Hindustani language.

[Punjabi-10] Defined at the national border with different writing systems rather than by language

[Nationalencyklopedin-11] Mikael Parkvall, "Världens 100 största språk 2007" (The World's 100 Largest Languages in 2007), in Nationalencyklopedin. Asterisks mark the 2010 estimates for the top dozen languages.

[2001Stm1-12] Abstract of speakers' strength of languages and mother tongues – 2000, Census of India, 2001

[17] Summary by language size