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For greater detail, see Distribution of languages in the world. 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 ...
LanguageFamilyBranchFirst-language (l1) SpeakersEnglish (excl. creole languages )380 millionMandarin Chinese (incl. Standard Chinese, ...939 millionHindi (excl. Urdu )345 millionSpanish (excl. creole languages )485 million- Ranked: The 100 Most Spoken Languages Worldwide
- How Do You Define A Language?
- Which Languages Have The Most speakers?
- What About Second (L2) Languages?
- Keeping Language Traditions Alive
Even though you’re reading this article in English, there’s a good chance it might not be your mother tongue. Of the billion-strong English speakers in the world, only 33%consider it their native language. The popularity of a language depends greatly on utility and geographic location. Additionally, how we measure the spread of world languages can ...
The data comes from the 22nd edition of Ethnologue, a database covering a majority of the world’s population, detailing approximately 7,111living languages in existence today. The definitions of languages are often dynamic, blurring the lines around a singular understanding of what makes a language: 1. Linguistic: focused on lexical and grammatical...
It comes as no surprise that English reigns supreme, with over 1.1 billiontotal speakers—or roughly 15% of the global population. Mandarin Chinese, Hindi, Spanish, and French round out the top five. However, this is only one piece in the full fabric of languages. The metrics for native speakers tell a slightly different tale, as Mandarin Chinese sh...
Nearly 43%of the world’s population is bilingual, with the ability to switch between two languages with ease. From the data, second language (L2) speakers can be calculated by looking at the difference between native and total speakers, as a proportion of the total. For example, 66% of Englishspeakers learned it as a second language. Swahili surpri...
Languages are fluid, and constantly evolving—altogether, the 100 most spoken languages paint a unique picture across centuries of a changing world. Here’s the full listof these languages, by types of speakers and language origin. One reason these languages are popular is that they are actively and consistently used. Unfortunately, nearly 3,000(abou...
May 24, 2024 · May 24, 2024. In 2023, there were around 1.5 billion people worldwide who spoke English either natively or as a second language, slightly more than the 1.1 billion Mandarin Chinese speakers at the ...
English, for instance, has fewer than 400 million native speakers, but more than 1 billion non-native speakers. By contrast, Chinese, which has the highest number of native speakers among the world’s languages, has relatively few non-native speakers outside China. Similarly, some languages, such as Javanese and Italian, are among the 25 most ...
There are about 7000 spoken languages in the world and about 300 writing systems. Which language is the number 1 worldwide? According to various sources, English is the most widely spoken language in the world, with around 1.35 billion speakers (first and second language (L1 and L2)).
The six branches of Afro-Asiatic are Semitic, Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, Omotic, and Egyptian. The Semitic branch has 78 languages, including Arabic, the first language of up to 300 million throughout North Africa and widely spoken in the Middle East. Among the world’s languages, Arabic ranks fourth in the number of speakers.
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The World Atlas of Languages is an online platform that reflects the dynamism and depths of the global linguistic diversity. It provides accurate, reliable, up-to-date and robust data on the world’s languages. By taking advantage of scientific and technological progress and drawing from data offered by trusted providers, including national ...
