List of languages by total speakers

From TheBestLinks.com

This is a list of languages by total speakers (counting only "first language" speakers).

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Chinese, Mandarin
Hindi
English
Spanish
Bengali
Russian
Portuguese
Japanese
German, Standard
Korean
French

14.37%
6.02%
5.61%
5.59%
3.4%
2.75%
2.63%
2.06%
1.64%
1.28%
1.27%

(2000 estimate)�

The following data was collected in 1996, and should be considered out of date. We are attempting to find a more recent source. Linked pages may not agree with data here because of differing sources. Rankings were removed from some linked pages because of ambiguity and the age of this data.

Lists such as this may vary somewhat depending upon the definition given to certain terms. In particular, the exact difference between "dialect" and "language" is often important. An example of where this can have an impact is the case of Arabic, which can be considered either a single language or a group of related languages. Ethnologue, the source of this table, considers it to be multiple languages, and it is therefore not listed here. If one chose to count it as a single language, however, it would appear in the top ten.

A similar situation occurs with Chinese. If all the varieties of Chinese are counted as a single language, then Chinese appears in first place with over 1.2 billion speakers. If counted separately, then five varieties of Chinese are found in the top 25.

This list only takes into account first-language (native) speakers. Counting second language speakers is extremely difficult and approximate at best.

Mandarin (Chinese), 890 million
Spanish, 330 million
English, 320 million
Bengali, 190 million
Hindi, 180 million
Portuguese, 170 million
Russian, 170 million
Japanese, 125 million
German 120 million
Wu (Chinese) 77 million
Javanese 75 million
Korean 75 million
French 72 million
Vietnamese 68 million
Telugu 66 million
Cantonese (Chinese) 66 million
Marathi 65 million
Tamil 63 million
Turkish 59 million
Urdu 58 million
Italian 57 million
Min Nan (Chinese) 49 million
Jin (Chinese) 45 million
Gujarati 44 million
Polish 44 million
Egyptian Arabic 43 million
Ukrainian 41 million

Source: ethnologue (http://www.ethnologue.com)

External links

�CIA - The World Factbook (http://cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/fields/2098.html) -- World (http://cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/xx.html#People)
100 most widely spoken languages (http://www.geobop.com/world/Facts/Languages/Languages/)
top 100 languages (http://www.davidpbrown.co.uk/help/top-100-languages-by-population.html)
ethnologue (http://www.ethnologue.com)
List of languages by total speakers including non-native speakers (http://www.the-bag-lady.co.uk/wct/wf/index.asp?cont=worldlanguages)