Search results
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
Languages by continent and a list with the number of native speakers of the most widely spoken languages in the world.
This entry provides a listing of languages spoken in each country and specifies any that are official national or regional languages. When data is available, the languages spoken in each country are broken down according to the percent of the total population speaking each language as a first language, unless otherwise noted.
List of languages. This is a partial list of natural languages, arranged alphabetically. Contents: Top – 0-9 A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z.
According to the World Atlas of Languages’ methodology, there are 8324 languages, spoken or signed, documented by the governments, public institutions and academic communities; out of 8324, around 7000 languages are still in use.
Summary. About 7,000 languages are spoken around the world today. The actual number depends on where the line is drawn between language and dialect—an arbitrary decision, because languages are always in flux.
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 .
