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Most spoken languages, Ethnologue, 2023; Language Family Branch First-language (L1) speakers Second-language (L2) speakers Total speakers (L1+L2) English (excl. creole languages) Indo-European: Germanic: 380 million 1.077 billion: 1.456 billion Mandarin Chinese (incl. Standard Chinese, but excl. other varieties) Sino-Tibetan: Sinitic: 939 million
LanguageFamilyBranchFirst-language (l1) SpeakersEnglish (excl. creole languages )380 millionMandarin Chinese (incl. Standard Chinese, ...939 millionHindi (excl. Urdu )345 millionSpanish (excl. creole languages )485 millionEnglish, 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 ...
- 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...
The following languages are listed as having at least 50 million first-language speakers in the 27th edition of Ethnologue published in 2024. [7] This section does not include entries that Ethnologue identifies as macrolanguages encompassing all their respective varieties, such as Arabic, Lahnda, Persian, Malay, Pashto, and Chinese .
LanguageNative Speakers (in Millions)Language FamilyBranch941486380345The world’s 8 billion inhabitants speak thousands of languages, but most of them are spoken by small populations. About 5 billion people are native speakers of just 25 languages. Below is a list of the 25 languages with the highest number of native speakers, according to data from the Ethnologue language catalog
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 ...
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Mar 28, 2024 · Bolivia is the country with the most official languages with 37, but only one of those — Spanish — makes the top 10 list here, while the rest are mostly indigenous languages protected by official status. 1. English. 1.515 billion total speakers. 2.
