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List of languages by total number of speakers facts for kids

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For first-language speakers only, see List of languages by number of native speakers.
Primary Human Languages Improved Version
This map shows the main language families around the world.

This article lists languages based on how many people speak them around the world. It includes both people who speak a language as their first language and those who learn it later.

It's actually quite tricky to figure out exactly how many people speak a language! Here's why:

  • What is a language? Sometimes, what we call one "language" (like Chinese or Arabic) actually has many different versions. These versions can be so different that people speaking them can't understand each other! So, they are sometimes seen as groups of languages instead. On the other hand, Hindi and Urdu are very similar, and people often understand both, so they are sometimes grouped as one language called Hindustani.
  • How well do you need to speak it? For people who learn a language as a second language, how good do they need to be at it to count? For example, English has about 450 million people who speak it from birth, but if you count everyone who knows some English, the number could be as high as two billion!
  • Counting speakers: It's hard to get exact numbers. Populations change, and sometimes people stop speaking one language and start speaking another (this is called language shift). Also, some countries don't have good records, or they might count languages in a confusing way. Sometimes, the number of speakers is made to seem bigger for political reasons, or smaller for less common languages.

Top Languages by Total Speakers (2023)

This section shows a list of languages with 45 million or more total speakers, according to the 26th edition of Ethnologue from 2023. Ethnologue is a well-known source for language information.

Please note: Some language names like Arabic or Chinese are actually big groups of many different languages. This list tries to count specific languages within those groups.


Most spoken languages, Ethnologue, 2023
Language Family Branch First-language
(L1) speakers		 Second-language
(L2) speakers		 Total speakers
(L1+L2)
English Indo-European Germanic 380 million 1.077 billion 1.456 billion
Mandarin Chinese Sino-Tibetan Sinitic 939 million 199 million 1.138 billion
Hindi Indo-European Indo-Aryan 345 million 266 million 610 million
Spanish Indo-European Romance 485 million 74 million 559 million
French Indo-European Romance 81 million 229 million 310 million
Modern Standard Arabic Afro-Asiatic Semitic 0 274 million 274 million
Bengali Indo-European Indo-Aryan 234 million 39 million 273 million
Portuguese Indo-European Romance 236 million 27 million 264 million
Russian Indo-European Balto-Slavic 147 million 108 million 255 million
Urdu Indo-European Indo-Aryan 71 million 161 million 232 million
Indonesian Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian 44 million 155 million 199 million
Standard German Indo-European Germanic 75 million 58 million 133 million
Japanese Japonic N/A 123 million 0.2 million 123 million
Nigerian Pidgin English Creole Krio 5 million 116 million 121 million
Egyptian Arabic Afro-Asiatic Semitic 77 million 25 million 102 million
Marathi Indo-European Indo-Aryan 83 million 16 million 99 million
Telugu Dravidian South-Central 83 million 13 million 96 million
Turkish Turkic Oghuz 84 million 6 million 90 million
Tamil Dravidian Southern 79 million 8 million 87 million
Yue Chinese Sino-Tibetan Sinitic 86 million 1 million 87 million
Vietnamese Austroasiatic Vietic 85 million 1 million 86 million
Wu Chinese Sino-Tibetan Sinitic 83 million 0.1 million 83 million
Tagalog Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian 29 million 54 million 83 million
Korean Koreanic N/A 82 million N/A
 82 million
Iranian Persian Indo-European Iranian 57 million 21 million 79 million
Hausa Afro-Asiatic Chadic 52 million 27 million 79 million
Swahili Niger–Congo Bantu 16 million 55 million 72 million
Javanese Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian N/A N/A
 68 million
Italian Indo-European Romance 65 million 3 million 68 million
Western Punjabi Indo-European Indo-Aryan N/A N/A
 67 million
Gujarati Indo-European Indo-Aryan 57 million 5 million 62 million
Thai Kra–Dai Zhuang–Tai 21 million 40 million 61 million
Kannada Dravidian Southern 44 million 15 million 59 million
Amharic Afro-Asiatic Semitic 32 million 25 million 58 million
Bhojpuri Indo-European Indo-Aryan 52 million 0.2 million 52 million
Eastern Punjabi Indo-European Indo-Aryan 48 million 4 million 52 million
Min Nan Chinese Sino-Tibetan Sinitic 50 million 0.4 million 50 million
Jin Chinese Sino-Tibetan Sinitic N/A N/A
 48 million
Levantine Arabic Afro-Asiatic Semitic 47 million 0.4 million 48 million
Yoruba Niger–Congo Atlantic–Congo 44 million 2 million 46 million

Top Languages by Percentage of World Population (2022)

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) publishes The World Factbook, which also estimates the most spoken languages. Here are their top ten languages from 2022, based on the total number of speakers (first language + second language).

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%

See also

Kids robot.svg In Spanish: Anexo:Idiomas por el total de hablantes para niños

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