This is a list of languages by total number of speakers.
It is difficult to define what
constitutes a language as opposed to a dialect. For example, Chinese and Arabic are
sometimes considered single languages, but each includes several mutually
unintelligible varieties, and so they are sometimes considered language families
instead. Conversely, colloquial registers of Hindi and Urdu are almost completely
mutually intelligible, and are sometimes classified as one language, Hindustani. 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]
There is no single criterion for how much knowledge is sufficient to be
counted as a second-language 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.[2]
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
underreported in favor of a national language.[3]
Ethnologue (2024) [ edit ]
The
following languages are listed as having 45 million or more total speakers in the 26th
edition of Ethnologue published in 2024.[4] Entries identified by Ethnologue as
macrolanguages (such as Arabic, Persian, Malay, Pashto, Sindhi, and Chinese,
encompassing all their respective varieties) are not included in this section.
CIA
World Factbook (2024) [ edit ]
The World Factbook, produced by the Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA), estimates the ten most spoken languages (L1 + L2) in 2024 as
follows:[46]
See also [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
^ [10] Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) is
not an L1. Arabic speakers first learn their respective local dialect . MSA is acquired
through formal education. ^ Ethnologue considers that Filipino is a standardized
variety of the Tagalog language with no speakers. Tagalog and Filipino are defined as
two different languages in the ISO 639 standard.considers that Filipino is a
standardized variety of the Tagalog language with no speakers.
