List of languages by total speakers

This is list of languages by total speakers (counting only native speakers).

Lists such as this may vary somewhat depending upon the definition given to certain terms. In particular, the exact difference between "dialect" and "language" is often important. An example of where this can have an impact is the case of Arabic, which can be considered either a single language or a group of related languages. Ethnologue, the source of this table, considers it to be multiple languages, and it is therefore not listed here. If one chose to count it as a single language, however, it would appear in the top ten.

1. Mandarin Chinese, 890 million
2. Spanish, 330 million
3. English, 320 million
4. Bengali, 190 million
5. Hindi, 180 million
6. Portuguese, 170 million
7. Russian, 170 million
8. Japanese, 125 million
9. German 100 million
10. Wu Chinese 77 million
11. Javanese 75 million
12. Korean 75 million
13. French 72 million
14. Vietnamese 68 million
15. Telugu 66 million
16. Yue Chinese 66 million
17. Marathi 65 million
18. Tamil 63 million
19. Turkish 59 million
20. Urdu 58 million
21. Min Nan Chinese 49 million
22. Polish 46 million
23. Jinyu Chinese 45 million
24. Gujarati 44 million
25. Egyptian Arabic 43 million

Source: ethnologue

See also

• List of languages

External links

• 100 most widely spoken languages
• top 100 languages
• ethnologue
• List of languages by total speakers including non-native speakers