Q&A: What are the most spoken languages on earth?

Q&A: What are the most spoken languages on earth?
mongabay.com
July 25, 2005

According to figures from UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, the most widely spoken language on earth is Mandarin which is spoken as a first language by nearly a billion people. Second on the list is English with around 358 million, followed by Spanish. French is spoken as a first language by a mere 81 million, good for number eleven on the list.

Language	First language speakers		Total speakers including second language users
	Range estimate	Midpoint number	Range estimate	Midpoint number
Chinese (Mandarin)	800-1100	950	856-1120	988
English	315-400	358	455-508	482
Spanish	266-400	333	320-472	396
Hindi	250-385	318	333-487	410
Arabic	180-210	195	207-260	233
Bangla (Bengali)	180-190	185	189-250	220
Russian	160-180	170	277-320	299
Portuguese	160-180	170	188-200	94
Japanese	120-125	123	120-133	127
German	98-100	99	107-125	116
French	72-90	81	125-265	195

All figures are in millions of people

Earlier this month UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, launched a call for submissions to its new 'Register of Good Practices in Language Preservation' as part of its campaign to safeguard languages in danger of extinction. UNESCO estimates that

Over 50% of the world's 6000 languages are endangered.
96% of the world's 6000 languages are spoken by 4% of the world's population.
90% of the world's languages are not represented on the Internet.
One language disappears on average every two weeks.

More estimates

Language	Estimated native speakers	Estimated speakers, native and spoken as a second language
Mandarin Chinese	873	1051
Spanish	322	500
English	380	600
Arabic	206 to 422
Hindi	181 to 366
Portuguese	177	223
Bengali	171 to 207	207
Russian	145 to 167	255
Japanese	122 to 128	130
German	95 to 101	170
Javanese	76	75.6
Wu	77
Telugu	70 to 76	86
Marathi	68	71
Vietnamese	67 to 70	86
Korean	67 to 78	78
Tamil	62	72
French	65 to 113	350
Italian	61 to 62	62
(Western) Punjabi	61 to 89	104
Urdu	60	104
Cantonese	55 to 66	100
Turkish	50 to 74	89
Min Nan	46 to 59	to to
Gujarati	46.1	46.1
Polish	43 to 44	44
Ukrainian	39 to 47	47
Persian	39 to 61	110
Malayalam	35 to 38	48
Kannada	35	64
Azerbaijani	31	39
Oriya	32
Hakka	30 to 34	to to
Burmese	22 to 32	42
Thai	20 to 46	60
Amharic	27	34
Sundanese	27
Romanian	26.3	30
Kurdish	31.4
Dutch	20 to 25
Pashto	26.8	30
Hausa	24.2	40
Indonesian	17.1	140
Oromo	17.2 to 24	26
Tagalog	17 to 22	85
Uzbek	20
Sindhi	20	1
Yoruba	19	21
Somali	9.8 to 16	10 to 16.5
Lao	3.2	19
Cebuano	15 to 18.5	30
Malay	18	21
Igbo	18
Serbo-Croatian	11	17
Malagasy	10.5	17
Nepali	16	31 to 40
Assamese	15
Shona	14 to 15	16 to 17
Khmer	8 to 14	15
Zhuang	14
Madurese	14
Hungarian	14
Sinhalese	13	15
Fula	11.4	13
Tamazight	3.5	13
Haitian Creole	7.8	12
Czech
Greek	12	17 to 18
Kazakh	8	12
Quechua	8.3	10.4
Zulu	9 to 9.6	25

Estimates derived from Wikipedia, which is based on figures from Ethnologue and Microsoft Encarta.

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