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The Largest Languages of the World

This a list of more than thirty world languages that have the largest number of native speakers (in millions). It is based on three different estimates: our own (Gulper 2013), those of the Swedish encyclopedia Nationalencyklopedin (NE 2007), and those of the Ethnologue.


Our estimates are based on the most recent available data updated to the current year 2013, considering population increase as well as the status of each language (growing, stable, declining), and taking into account the often blurred distinction between language and dialect. Some discrepancies with other estimates are explained in notes at the bottom of the table.


Nationalencyklopedin provides estimates for the year 2007 while the Ethnologue is based on actual data gathered, mainly, in the years showed between brackets (when a language is spoken in several countries we show only the date of the data with the major weight).


    1. Language

    01) Chinese

    02) Hindi

    03) Spanish

    04) English

    05) Arabic

    06) Bengali

    07) Portuguese

    08) Russian

    09) Japanese

    10) Punjabi

    11) German

    12) Javanese

    13) Telugu

    14) Marathi

    15) French

    16) Korean

    17) Vietnamese

    18) Tamil

    19) Urdu

    20) Turkish

    21) Persian

    22) Italian

    23) Thai

    24) Gujarati

    25) Malay

    26) Kannada

    27) Polish

    28) Ukrainian

    29) Pashto

    30) Malayalam

    31) Oriya

    32) Sundanese

    33) Hausa

    34) Burmese

    Gulper (2013)

    13000000

    5080000

    4300000

    3830000

    3100000

    2650000

    2060000

    1640000

    1280000

    1150000

    1010000

    950000

    860000

    830000

    800000

    790000

    790000

    780000

    750000

    720000

    670000

    630000

    560000

    550000

    500000

    440000

    410000

    400000

    35-450000

    390000

    380000

    380000

    350000

    350000

      

    NE (2007)

    93500

    29500

    38700

    36500

    28000

    20200

    20400

    16000

    12700

    9600

    9200

    8200

    7600

    7300

    7400

    7600

    7600

    7000

    6600

    6300

    6500

    5900

    5600

    4900

    7700

    3800

    4000

    3000

    3900

    3800

    3300

    3800

    3400

    3300

      

    Ethnologue

    847 (2000)

    260 (2001)

    405 (2011)

    335 (2010)

    223 (2006)

    193 (2001)

    202 (1998)

    162 (2010)

    122 (1985)

    90 (2001)

    84 (1990)

    84 (2000)

    74 (2001)

    72 (2001)

    68 (2006)

    66 (1986)

    68 (1999)

    69 (2001)

    63 (2001)

    51 (1987)

    57 (2011)

    61 (------)

    20 (2000)

    46 (2001)

    16 (2004)

    38 (2001)

    39 (1986)

    38 (2001)

    27 (1993)

    34 (2001)

    32 (2001)

    34 (2000)

    25 (1991)

    32 (2000)



Notes


  1. 1)Chinese. We have considered all forms of Chinese as one language while Nationalencyklopedin and the Ethnologue consider different forms of Chinese as separate languages. Their numbers are for Mandarin Chinese only. Neither view is necessarily more correct than the other. Both have its pros and cons.


  1. 2)Hindi. We have included within Hindi all its varieties with the exception of Urdu and Maithili, namely standard Hindi, Braj, Avadhi, Bhojpuri, Magahi and Rajasthani. Others consider them separate languages which explains the big discrepancy between our estimate and many other ones. In this matter we have followed the 2001 census of India that gives 422 million of Hindi speakers which with the population increase between 2001-2013 (about 20 %) yields our number of 508 million.


  1. 6)Bengali. Bangladesh accounts for the majority of speakers of Bengali and as the 2001 census seems to underestimate the total population of the country we have relied on several estimates that are more or less coincidental: US State Department (144 millions in 2007), World Bank (160 million in 2008), CIA World Fact Book (156 million in 2010), Word Population Reference (164 million in 2010). Based on them, we estimate that the population of Bangladesh is 171 million of which 98 % speak Bengali yielding 168 million to which the 97 million speakers of Bengali living in India must be added.


  1. 25)Malay. Malay is the national language of several countries (Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, Singapore) but is the mother tongue of a relatively low percentage of the population. However, the number of Malay speakers is increasing fast as many people are switching from their regional languages to the national language.


  1. 29)Pashto. It is difficult to estimate accurately the number of Pashto speakers, because of disagreement about the percentage of Pakistanis who speak the language (between 10 to 20 % of the population).



The Largest Language Families

This is a list of the language families that have the greater number of speakers (in millions). The number of languages in each family is approximate because there is no uniform criteria to separate independent language from dialect. Below the table, some notes give further information.


  1. Phylum/Family

    Indo-European

    Sino-Tibetan

    Niger-Congo

    Afro-Asiatic

    Austronesian

    Dravidian

    Turkic

    Austroasiatic

    Tai-Kadai

    Nilo-Saharan

    Uralic

    Caucasian

    Hmong-Mien

    Mongolic

    Quechuan

    Tupian

    Mayan

    Papuan

    Aymaran

    Oto-Manguean

    Uto-Aztecan

    Area

    World

    China, SE Asia

    sub-Saharan Africa

    North Africa, Middle East

    SE Asia, Oceania

    India

    Turkey, Central Asia, Siberia

    SE Asia

    SE Asia, South China

    From Mali to east of Lake Victoria

    NE Europe, Northern Asia

    Caucasus region

    Southern China, North SE Asia

    Mongolia, North China

    Andean region of South America

    Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay, Argentina

    South Mexico and Central America

    New Guinea

    Bolivia, Peru

    Mexico

    Mexico, South USA

    Languages

    110-1400

    3000

    10000

    2700

    12000

    230

    290

    1400

    400

    1300

    200

    35-400

    11-150

    130

    3-160

    700

    300

    7000

    30

    250

    300

    Speakers

    30000

    13600

    6160

    4700

    3500

    2590

    1640

    1170

    930

    460

    200

    120

    7-100

    7-80

    7-80

    6-70

    5-60

    40

    20

    20

    20



Notes


  1. 1)The Caucasian and Papuan “families” are more a geographical grouping than a genetic one.


  1. 2)Two major languages, Japanese and Korean, are of uncertain classification and probably isolates. Because of this, they are not included in the table.


  1. 3)Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic families (the latter not shown here) are considered by some scholars as part of a larger grouping, the Altaic family or phylum.


  1. 4)North American indigenous families were widely spoken in the past but now have comparatively few speakers. Thus, they are not shown in the table.



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LARGEST LANGUAGES AND FAMILIES OF THE WORLD

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