List of languages by number of native speakers
This is list of languages by total speakers (counting only native speakers).
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.
- 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 100 million
- Wu Chinese 77 million
- Javanese 75 million
- Korean 75 million
- French 72 million
- Vietnamese 68 million
- Telugu 66 million
- Yue Chinese 66 million
- Marathi 65 million
- Tamil 63 million
- Turkish 59 million
- Urdu 58 million
- Min Nan Chinese 49 million
- Polish 46 million
- Jinyu Chinese 45 million
- Gujarati 44 million
- Egyptian Arabic 43 million
Source: ethnologue