List of languages by number of native speakers - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Language ↓ Family ↓ Ethnologue (2005 estimate)[1] ↓ Encarta estimate[2] ↓ Other estimates ↓ Ranking by Ethnologue estimate ↓
Mandarin Sino-Tibetan, Chinese 873,000,000 1,210,000,000†[2] 982,000,000 native, 179,000,000 second language = 1,151,000,000 total[3]
†Encarta estimate includes all Chinese dialects 1
Hindi Indo-European, Indo-Iranian, Indo-Aryan 366,000,000[4] 366,000,000 Standard Hindi 325,000,000; A total of 650,000,000 including Urdu and secondary speakers, does not include Maithili. All Hindi dialects are mutually intelligible. 2
Spanish Indo-European, Italic, Romance 322,300,000[5] 322,200,000[6] Total of 417 million including second-language speakers (1999).[7][8] 3
English Indo-European, Germanic, West 309,350,000[9] 341,000,000 Over 1,500,000,000 worldwide.[10] Also see List of countries by English-speaking population which numbers 850,000,000 worldwide (as a total of first and additional language spoken). 4
Arabic Afro-Asiatic, Semitic 206,000,000[11] 422,000,000

It is also one of the six official languages of the United Nations.[12]
5
Portuguese Indo-European, Italic, Romance 177,500,000 176,000,000 215 million native, 20 million second language = 235 million total[citation needed] 6
Bengali Indo-European, Indo-Iranian, Indo-Aryan 171,000,000 207,000,000 196 million native (2004 CIA) (includes 14 million Chittagonian and 10.3 million Sylheti). 7
Russian Indo-European, Slavic, East 145,000,000 167,000,000 165 million native, 110 million second language = 275 million total 8
Japanese Considered either language isolate or Altaic 122,400,000 125,000,000 130 million native, 2 million second language = 132 million total 9
German Indo-European, Germanic, West 95,400,000 100,100,000 101 million native (88 million Standard German, 5 million Swiss German, 8 million Austrian German), 60 million second language in EU[13] + 5–20 million worldwide. 10
Punjabi Indo-European, Indo-Iranian, Indo-Aryan 88,000,000 57,000,000 61–62 million (2000 WCD) (taken together with Eastern Punjabi (28 million) and Siraiki (14 million): 104 million total) 11
French Indo-European, Italic, Romance 78,000,000[14]
78,000,000
113 million “native and real speakers”[15] (includes 64,473,140 French people), 250 million second language (worldwide including Africa and North Africa) = 363 million (as a total of first and additional language spoken) and up to 500 million total with significant knowledge of the language (2008).[16] 12
Wu Sino-Tibetan, Chinese 77,200,000 — 77 million native 13
Javanese Austronesian, Malayo-Polynesian, Sunda-Sulawesi 75,500,000 75,600,000 70–75 million 14
Telugu Dravidian, South Central 69,700,000 69,700,000 70 million native, 5 million second language = 75 million total (2001)[17] 15
Marathi Indo-European, Indo-Iranian, Indo-Aryan 68,000,000 68,000,000 68 million native, 3 million second language = 71 million total 16
Vietnamese Austro-Asiatic, Mon-Khmer, Vietic 67,400,000 68,000,000 70 million native, perhaps up to 16 million second language, = ~86 million total 17
Korean Considered either language isolate or Altaic 67,000,000 77,000,000 79 million if including secondary and non-native speakers.[18] 18
Tamil Dravidian, Southern 68,000,000 68,000,000 69 million native, 10 million second language = 79 million total[17] 19
Italian Indo-European, Italic, Romance 61,500,000 62,000,000