How many languages can you name? Producing a list of the most spoken languages in the world is tricky. If we are talking about how many speakers a language has it can be broken down into two categories, such as who speaks it as a native language, and who speaks it at all. Some languages also have different dialects; the difference in accent and vocabulary could arguably divide one language into various languages. Consider someone from Boston, Massachusetts trying to communicate with someone from Wexford, Ireland.
Even the number of languages spoken in total is in flux as we are continuously learning about languages, and some are endangered or have become extinct. Due to the ongoing pressure of European settlement, it can be generally assumed that each year fewer indigenous languages are being spoken around the world. Another component to consider when factoring the amount of languages spoken is density versus area of a language spoken. For example, Chinese might be the language that has the most native speakers, but this is due a lot to there being a lot of people in China, and the language is mostly spoken in a condensed area in Asia. English, on the other hand, is the most spoken language in general and it is spread out throughout the world. This being originally due to European settlement then later due to the spread of American culture.
As of May 2020, there are 7,117 living languages. Find the list of languages by rough estimate below in order of amount of total speakers, and not just native speakers.
Language – # of Speakers
- English – 1,268M
- Mandarin Chinese- 1,120M
- Hindi – 637.3M
- Spanish – 537.9M
- French – 276.6M
- Standard Arabic – 274M
- Bengali – 265.2M
- Russian – 258M
- Portuguese – 252.2M
- Indonesian – 199M
- Urdu – 170.6M
- Standard German – 131.6M
- Japanese – 126.4M
- Swahili – 98.5M
- Marathi – 95.3M
- Telugu – 93M
- Turkish – 85.2M
- Yue Chinese – 84.9M
- Tamil – 83.8M
- Western Punjabi – 82.8M
- Wu Chinese – 81.8M
- Korean – 79.4M
- Vietnamese -77M
- Hausa – 72.7M
- Javanese – 68.3M
- Egyptian Arabic – 67.8M
- Italian – 67.7M
- Thai – 60.7M
- Gujarati – 60.7M
- Kannada – 56.5M
- Persian – 55M
- Bhojpuri – 52.4M
- Polish – 50M
- Southern Min – 48.5M
- Hakka – 47.8M
- Filipino – 45M
- Pashto – 40M
- Ukranian – 40M
- Yoruba – 40M
- Malayalam – 37.7M
- Xiang Chinese – 36M
- Odia – 35M
- Maithili – 35M
- Sudanese Arabic– 33M
- Burmese – 32M
- Oromo – 30M
- Uzbek – 27M
- Romanian – 26M
- Sindhi – 25M
- Tagalog – 23.8M
Written by:Maëlle Jayet
