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User:Drmaik/languages by ethnologue

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This list gives the most spoken languages in the world according to the Ethnologue, a widely cited reference for languages around the world. The Ethnologue is sometimes criticised for using out-of-date data, but there is no available fully authoritative source for numbers of first language speakers which uses the same criteria for counting in each case. Another tendency of the Ethnologue is to separate what many others (sometimes including speakers of the varieties) consider to be single languages: see for example comments in this article on English and German.

This list aims to count first language speakers only (though there are some difficulties with this criteria, as with any other, caused by issues such as bilingualism, differing perceptions of identity and the questions of when language varieties are to be considered different languages or dialects.


Ranking by number of native speakers Language Number of speakers Where spoken natively by more than 5% of the population (in order of population, down to 20,000 speakers) Comments
1 Mandarin Chinese 873m (1999) People's Republic of China, Republic of China (Taiwan) This figure does not include other dialects of Chinese such as Cantonese
2 Spanish 322.3m (1995) Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Spain, United States, Venezuela, Peru, Chile, Cuba, Ecuador, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, Uruguay, Panama, Belize, Andorra, Gibraltar
3 English 309.4m (1984) United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, Ireland, Singapore, Bermuda, Northern Mariana Islands, Bahamas, Guam, Cayman Islands Does not include significant populations in countries such as Jamaica and Guyana, where speakers are said to speak creoles.
4 Arabic 206m (1998) Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Iraq, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Syria, Tunisia, Libya, Lebanon, Jordan, Mauritania, Palestinian Territories, Israel, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Chad, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Djibouti, Western Sahara Figure from all Arabic dialects, which are not necessarily mutually intelligible
5 Hindi 180.8m (1991) India, Fiji Indian census (1991) figure is 337m, which may be seen by some to reflect ethnic identity rather than actual language spoken, or mutual intelligibility.
6 Portuguese 177.5m (1998) Brazil, Portugal
7 Bengali 171.1m (1994) Bangladesh, India
8 Russian 145m (2000) Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Israel, Moldova, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Estonia, Lithuania, Turkmenistan
9 Japanese 122.4m (1985) Japan
10 German 95.4m (1994) Germany, Austria The Ethnologue treats Schwyzerdütsch as a separate language, so Switzerland is not included.

See also

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Category:Lists of languages


Next languages

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javanese 75.5 telugu 69.7 marathi 68.0 Vietnamese 67.4 Korean 67 Tamil 66 french 64.9m Italian 61.5 Punjabi 60.8 Urdu 60.5

Turkish 50.6 Thai 20.2 + 26 other dialects = 46.2 Gujarati 46.1 Polish 42.7 Kannada 35.3 Farsi 24.3 + Dari 7.6= 31.9 for macro