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Languages speakers
The following information comes via Wikipedia from Ethnologue which has much fascinating data and also a gazetteer of countries oriented to language issues - and with great maps!
Top languages by population
Ethnologue (2023, 26th edition)
The following languages are listed as having at least 50 million first-language speakers in the 2023 edition of Ethnologue. Entries identified by Ethnologue as macrolanguages (such as Arabic, Lahnda, Persian, Malay, Pashto, and Chinese, encompassing all their respective varieties) are not included in this section.
Language names have in a few cases been changed to fit the requirements of this wiki.
The table below has been used to populate languages entries for number of first-language speakers other than ones we had populated already with that parameter.
| Language | Native speakers
(millions) |
Language family | Branch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chinese (Mandarin)
(not in ISO 639-1) |
939 | Sino-Tibetan | Sinitic |
| Spanish | 485 | Indo-European | Romance |
| English | 380 | Indo-European | Germanic |
| Hindi | 345 | Indo-European | Indo-Aryan |
| Portuguese | 236 | Indo-European | Romance |
| Bengali | 234 | Indo-European | Indo-Aryan |
| Russian | 147 | Indo-European | Balto-Slavic |
| Japanese | 123 | Japonic | Japanese |
| Yue Chinese
(not in ISO 639-1) |
86.1 | Sino-Tibetan | Sinitic |
| Vietnamese | 85.0 | Austroasiatic | Vietic |
| Turkish | 84.0 | Turkic | Oghuz |
| Wu Chinese
(not in ISO 639-1) |
83.4 | Sino-Tibetan | Sinitic |
| Marathi | 83.2 | Indo-European | Indo-Aryan |
| Telugu | 83.0 | Dravidian | South-Central |
| Korean | 81.7 | Koreanic | — |
| French | 80.8 | Indo-European | Romance |
| Tamil | 78.6 | Dravidian | South |
| Egyptian Spoken Arabic
(not in ISO 639-1) |
77.4 | Afroasiatic | Semitic |
| German | 75.3 | Indo-European | Germanic |
| Urdu | 70.6 | Indo-European | Indo-Aryan |
| Javanese | 68.3 | Austronesian | Malayo-Polynesian |
| Punjabi | 66.7 | Indo-European | Indo-Aryan |
| Italian | 64.6 | Indo-European | Romance |
| Gujarati | 57.1 | Indo-European | Indo-Aryan |
| Farsi | 57.2 | Indo-European | Iranian |
| Bhojpuri
(not in ISO 639-1) |
52.3 | Indo-European | Indo-Aryan |
| Hausa | 51.7 | Afroasiatic | Chadic |