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Most spoken languages, CIA, 2022; Language Percentage of world population (2022) English: 18.8% Mandarin Chinese: 13.8% Hindi: 7.5% Spanish: 6.9% French: 3.4% Arabic: 3.4% Bengali: 3.4% Russian: 3.2% Portuguese: 3.2% Urdu: 2.9%
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...
Mar 28, 2024 · 1. Chinese — 1.3 Billion Native Speakers. Numbers vary widely — Ethnologue puts the number of native speakers at 1.3 billion native speakers, roughly 900 million of whom speak Mandarin — but there’s no doubt it’s the most spoken language in the world.
Jan 4, 2023 · In the future, there may be many more than 7,151 languages spoken globally, and it is also possible that there could be significantly fewer. Even if a time comes when only one language is spoken, thanks to the dynamic nature of humankind, a new dialect will always be around the corner.
- Cory Price
Below is a list of the 25 languages with the highest number of total speakers, according to data from the Ethnologue language catalog in the early 2020s. For a list of languages that counts only the number of native speakers, see languages by number of native speakers. English (1,456,448,320)
Over 88% of people speak one of these languages as their native tongue, and many hundreds of millions more speak them as second languages. This ranking accounts for both, showing the total usage worldwide.
The 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.
