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. Some languages, such as Chinese and Arabic, cover several mutually unintelligible varieties and are sometimes considered single languages and sometimes language families. Conversely, colloquial registers of Hindi and Urdu are almost completely mutually intelligible, and are sometimes classified as one language, Hindustani, instead of two separate languages. Such rankings should be used with caution, because it is not possible to devise a coherent set of linguistic criteria for distinguishing languages in a dialect continuum.
There is no single criterion for how much knowledge is sufficient to be counted as a second-language speaker. For example, English has about 400 million native speakers but, depending on the criterion chosen, can be said to have as many as 2 billion speakers.
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 is no reliable census data, the data is not current, or the census may not record languages spoken, or record them ambiguously. Sometimes speaker populations are exaggerated for political reasons, or speakers of minority languages may be under-reported in favour of a national language.
Top languages by population
Ethnologue (2021, 24th edition)
The following languages are listed as having 40 million or more total speakers in the 2021 edition of Ethnologue. Entries identified by Ethnologue as macrolanguages (such as Arabic, Persian, Malay, Pashto, and Chinese, encompassing all their respective variants) are not included in this section.
| Rank | Language | Family | Branch | First language (L1) speakers | Second language (L2) speakers | Total speakers (L1+L2) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | English | Indo-European | Germanic | 369.9 million | 978.2 million | 1.348 billion |
| 2 | Mandarin Chinese (incl. Standard Chinese, but excl. other varieties) |
Sino-Tibetan | Sinitic | 921.2 million | 198.7 million | 1.120 billion |
| 3 | Hindi (excl. Urdu) |
Indo-European | Indo-Aryan | 342.2 million | 258.3 million | 600 million |
| 4 | Spanish | Indo-European | Romance | 471.4 million | 71.5 million | 543 million |
| 5 | Standard Arabic (excl. dialects) |
Afro-Asiatic | Semitic | — | 274 million | 274 million |
| 6 | Bengali | Indo-European | Indo-Aryan | 228.7 million | 39.0 million | 268 million |
| 7 | French | Indo-European | Romance | 79.6 million | 187.4 million | 267 million |
| 8 | Russian | Indo-European | Balto-Slavic | 153.7 million | 104.3 million | 258 million |
| 9 | Portuguese | Indo-European | Romance | 232.4 million | 25.2 million | 258 million |
| 10 | Urdu (excl. Hindi) |
Indo-European | Indo-Aryan | 69.0 million | 161.0 million | 230 million |
| 11 | Indonesian (excl. Malay) |
Austronesian | Malayo-Polynesian | 43.6 million | 155.4 million | 199 million |
| 12 | Standard German | Indo-European | Germanic | 76.6 million | 58.5 million | 135 million |
| 13 | Japanese | Japonic | — | 126.3 million | 121,500 | 126 million |
| 14 | Marathi | Indo-European | Indo-Aryan | 83.1 million | 16.0 million | 99 million |
| 15 | Telugu | Dravidian | South-Central | 82.6 million | 13.0 million | 96 million |
| 16 | Turkish | Turkic | Oghuz | 82.2 million | 5.9 million | 88 million |
| 17 | Tamil | Dravidian | Southern | 77.5 million | 8.0 million | 85 million |
| 18 | Yue Chinese (incl. Cantonese) |
Sino-Tibetan | Sinitic | 84.9 million | 402,000 | 85 million |
| 19 | Wu Chinese (incl. Shanghainese) |
Sino-Tibetan | Sinitic | 81.7 million | 63,000 | 82 million |
| 20 | Korean | Koreanic | — | — | — | 82 million |
| 21 | Vietnamese | Austroasiatic | Vietic | 76.1 million | 745,000 | 77 million |
| 22 | Hausa | Afro-Asiatic | Chadic | 48.6 million | 26.3 million | 75 million |
| 23 | Iranian Persian (excl. Dari and Tajik) |
Indo-European | Iranian | 56.3 million | 17.9 million | 74 million |
| 24 | Egyptian Spoken Arabic (excl. other Arabic dialects) |
Afro-Asiatic | Semitic | — | — | 70 million |
| 25 | Swahili | Niger–Congo | Bantu | 16.3 million | 52.9 million | 69 million |
| 26 | Javanese | Austronesian | Malayo-Polynesian | — | — | 68 million |
| 27 | Italian | Indo-European | Romance | 64.8 million | 3.1 million | 68 million |
| 28 | Western Punjabi (excl. Eastern Punjabi) |
Indo-European | Indo-Aryan | — | — | 65 million |
| 29 | Gujarati | Indo-European | Indo-Aryan | 56.9 million | 5.0 million | 62 million |
| 30 | Thai | Kra–Dai | Zhuang–Tai | 20.7 million | 40.0 million | 61 million |
| 31 | Kannada | Dravidian | Southern | 43.6 million | 15.0 million | 59 million |
| 32 | Amharic | Afroasiatic | Semitic | 32.3 million | 25.1 million | 57 million |
| 33 | Bhojpuri | Indo-European | Indo-Aryan | 52.3 million | 160,000 | 52 million |
| 34 | Eastern Punjabi (excl. Western Punjabi) |
Indo-European | Indo-Aryan | 48.6 million | 3.6 million | 52 million |
| 35 | Min Nan Chinese (incl. Hokkien) |
Sino-Tibetan | Sinitic | 48.4 million | 387,000 | 49 million |
| 36 | Nigerian Pidgin | English Creole | — | — | — | 48 million |
| 37 | Jin Chinese | Sino-Tibetan | Sinitic | — | — | 47 million |
| 38 | Filipino (excl. Tagalog) |
Austronesian | Malayo-Polynesian | — | 45.0 million | 45 million |
| 39 | Hakka Chinese | Sino-Tibetan | Sinitic | — | — | 44 million |
| 40 | Yoruba | Niger–Congo | Atlantic–Congo | — | — | 43 million |
| 41 | Burmese | Sino-Tibetan | Tibeto-Burman | — | — | 43 million |
| 42 | Sudanese Spoken Arabic | Afro-Asiatic | Semitic | — | — | 42 million |
| 43 | Polish | Indo-European | Balto-Slavic | — | — | 41 million |
| 44 | Odia | Indo-European | Indo-Aryan | — | — | 40 million |