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Principal language families of the world (and in some cases geographic groups of families). 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.
LanguageFamilyBranchFirst-language (l1) SpeakersEnglish (excl. creole languages )380 millionMandarin Chinese (incl. Standard Chinese, ...939 millionHindi (excl. Urdu )345 millionSpanish (excl. creole languages )485 millionEnglish is also widely used in media and literature, and the number of English language books published annually in India is the third largest in the world after the US and UK. However, English is rarely spoken as a first language, numbering only around a couple hundred-thousand people, and less than 5% of the population speak fluent English in ...
- Manually coded English, (multiple systems)
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 ...
The English-speaking world comprises the 124 countries and territories in which English is an official, Co-Official, administrative, or cultural language. In 2020's, one billion to two billion people spoke English, [1] [2] making it the largest language by number of speakers, the third largest language by number of native speakers, and the most ...
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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...
Mar 22, 2024 · Published by. Einar H. Dyvik , Mar 22, 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 ...
RankLanguageTotal SpeakersNative Speakers1English1,132M379M2Mandarin Chinese1,117M918M3Hindi615M341M4Spanish534M460MBelow is a list of the 25 languages with the highest number of native speakers, according to data from the Ethnologue language catalog in the early 2020s. For a list that also counts people who speak the language non-natively but proficiently, see languages by total number of speakers. Lahnda (103,000,000 [Western Punjabi: 66,715,480]).
