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.
