This is alist of languages by total number of speakers.
It is difficult to define what constitutes alanguage as opposed to adialect. For example, whileArabic is sometimes considered a single language centred onModern Standard Arabic, other authors consider its mutually unintelligible varieties separate languages.[1] Similarly,Chinese is sometimes viewed as a single language because of a shared culture and common literary language, but sometimes considered multiple languages.[2] Conversely,colloquialregisters ofHindi andUrdu are almost completely mutually intelligible and are sometimes classified as one language,Hindustani. Rankings of languages should therefore be used with caution, as it is not possible to devise a coherent set of linguistic criteria for distinguishing languages in adialect continuum.[3][dead link]
There is no single criterion for how much knowledge is sufficient to be counted as asecond-language (L2) 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.[4]
There are also difficulties in obtaining reliable counts of speakers, which vary over time because of population change andlanguage shift. In some areas, there are no reliablecensus data, the data are not current, or the census may not record languages spoken or may record them ambiguously. Speaker populations may be exaggerated for political reasons, or speakers of minority languages may be underreported in favor of a national language.[5]
Ethnologue lists the following languages as having 50 million or more total speakers.[6] This section does not include entries thatEthnologue identifies asmacrolanguages encompassing severalvarieties, such asArabic,Lahnda,Persian,Malay,Pashto, andChinese.
The World Factbook, produced by the USCentral Intelligence Agency (CIA), estimates the ten most spoken languages (L1 +L2) in 2022 as follows:[8]
| 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% |
