List of languages by number of native speakers facts for kids

Current distribution of human language families

It's really interesting to know which languages are spoken by the most people around the world! This article looks at languages based on how many people speak them as their very first language. This is called their native language.

Counting language speakers can be a bit tricky. Why? Because sometimes it's hard to decide if two ways of speaking are different languages or just different versions (called dialects) of the same language. For example, people in Denmark and Norway can often understand each other, even though they speak different languages. But sometimes, different dialects of the same language, like English or German, can be hard to understand for people from different regions.

Also, getting exact numbers for how many people speak a language is tough. Populations change, and sometimes countries don't have up-to-date information. Sometimes, the numbers might even be changed for political reasons. But we do our best to get good estimates!

Languages with the Most Native Speakers

From Ethnologue (2024)

Ethnologue is a big book and website that lists languages from all over the world. Their 2023 edition (which came out in 2024) shares which languages have at least 50 million native speakers. This list focuses on specific languages, not big groups like "Arabic" or "Chinese" that include many different kinds of speech.

From the CIA World Factbook (2018)

The CIA World Factbook is a book published by the U.S. government. It gives facts and figures about countries around the world. Here are their estimates for the most spoken first languages in 2018, shown as a percentage of the world's population:

See also