List of languages by total number of speakers

For first-language speakers only, see List of languages by number of native speakers.

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, while Arabic is sometimes considered a single language centred on Modern Standard Arabic, other authors consider its mutually unintelligible varieties separate languages.^[1] Similarly, Chinese is sometimes viewed as a single language because of a shared culture and common literary language, but sometimes considered multiple languages.^[2] Conversely, colloquial registers of Hindi and Urdu are almost completely mutually intelligible and are sometimes classified as one language, Hindustani. Rankings of languages should therefore be used with caution, as it is not possible to devise a coherent set of linguistic criteria for distinguishing languages in a dialect continuum.^[3]

There is no single criterion for how much knowledge is sufficient to be counted as a second-language (L2) speaker. For example, English has about 450 million native speakers but depending on the criterion chosen can be said to have as many as two billion speakers.^[4]

There are also difficulties in obtaining reliable counts of speakers, which vary over time because of population change and language shift. In some areas, there are no reliable census data, the data are not current, or the census may not record languages spoken or may record them ambiguously. Speaker populations may be exaggerated for political reasons, or speakers of minority languages may be underreported in favor of a national language.^[5]

Ethnologue (2025)

Ethnologue lists the following languages as having 50 million or more total speakers.^[6] This section does not include entries that Ethnologue identifies as macrolanguages encompassing several varieties, such as Arabic, Lahnda, Persian, Malay, Pashto, and Chinese.

Most spoken languages, Ethnologue, 2025^[6]

Language	Family	Branch	Numbers of speakers (millions)
			First- language (L1)	Second- language (L2)	Total (L1+L2)
English (excl. creole languages)	Indo-European	Germanic	390	1,138	1,528
Mandarin Chinese (incl. Standard Chinese, but excl. other varieties)	Sino-Tibetan	Sinitic	990	194	1,184
Hindi (excl. Urdu)	Indo-European	Indo-Aryan	345	264	609
Spanish (excl. creole languages)	Indo-European	Romance	484	74	558
Modern Standard Arabic (excl. dialects)	Afro-Asiatic	Semitic	0[a]	335	335
French (excl. creole languages)	Indo-European	Romance	74	238	312
Bengali	Indo-European	Indo-Aryan	242	43	284
Portuguese (excl. creole languages)	Indo-European	Romance	250	17	267
Russian	Indo-European	Balto-Slavic	145	108	253
Indonesian (excl. other Austronesian)	Austronesian	Malayo-Polynesian	75	177	252
Urdu (excl. Hindi)	Indo-European	Indo-Aryan	78	168	246
Standard German	Indo-European	Germanic	76	58	134
Japanese	Japonic	—	124	2	126
Nigerian Pidgin	English Creole	Krio	5	116	121
Egyptian Arabic (excl. other Arabic dialects)	Afro-Asiatic	Semitic	84	35	119
Marathi	Indo-European	Indo-Aryan	83	16	99
Vietnamese	Austroasiatic	Vietic	86	11	97
Telugu	Dravidian	South-Central	83	13	96
Hausa	Afro-Asiatic	Chadic	58	36	94
Turkish	Turkic	Oghuz	85	6	91
Western Punjabi (excl. Eastern Punjabi)	Indo-European	Indo-Aryan	—	—	90
Swahili	Niger–Congo	Bantu	4	83	87
Tagalog[b]	Austronesian	Malayo-Polynesian	33	54	87
Tamil	Dravidian	South	79	8	86
Yue Chinese (incl. Cantonese)	Sino-Tibetan	Sinitic	85	1	86
Wu Chinese (incl. Shanghainese)	Sino-Tibetan	Sinitic	83	<1	83
Iranian Persian (excl. other Persian dialects)	Indo-European	Iranian	65	17	83
Korean	Koreanic	—	81	<1	82
Thai	Kra–Dai	Zhuang–Tai	27	44	71
Javanese	Austronesian	Malayo-Polynesian	—	—	69
Italian	Indo-European	Romance	63	3	66
Gujarati	Indo-European	Indo-Aryan	58	5	62
Levantine Arabic (excl. other Arabic dialects)	Afro-Asiatic	Semitic	58	3	60
Amharic	Afro-Asiatic	Semitic	35	25	60
Kannada	Dravidian	South	44	15	59
Bhojpuri	Indo-European	Indo-Aryan	53	<1	53
Sudanese Arabic	Afro-Asiatic	Semitic	41	11	52

The World Factbook (2022)

The World Factbook, produced by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), estimates the ten most spoken languages (L1 + L2) in 2022 as follows:^[8]

Most spoken languages, CIA, 2022^[8]

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%

See also

• Lingua franca
• Lists of languages
• List of languages by number of native speakers
• List of sign languages by number of native signers
• List of countries by number of languages
• List of countries and territories by official language
• World language
• Languages used on the Internet
• Extinct language
• Official languages of the United Nations
• Geolinguistics
• Language geography

Explanatory notes

1. Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) is not an L1. Arabic speakers first learn their respective local dialect. MSA is acquired through formal education.^[7]
2. Tagalog and Filipino are defined as two different languages in the ISO 639 standard. Ethnologue considers that Filipino is a standardized variety of the Tagalog language with no speakers.