Misc

Ranked: The 100 Most Spoken Languages Around the World

Published

3 years ago

February 15, 2020

Iman Ghosh

100 Most Spoken Languages

Ranked: The 100 Most Spoken Languages Worldwide

Even though you’re reading this article in English, there’s a good chance it might not be your mother tongue. Of the billion-strong English speakers in the world, only 33% consider it their native language.

The popularity of a language depends greatly on utility and geographic location. Additionally, how we measure the spread of world languages can vary greatly depending on whether you look at total speakers or native speakers.

Today’s detailed visualization from WordTips illustrates the 100 most spoken languages in the world, the number of native speakers for each language, and the origin tree that each language has branched out from.

How Do You Define A Language?

The data comes from the 22nd edition of Ethnologue, a database covering a majority of the world’s population, detailing approximately 7,111 living languages in existence today.

The definitions of languages are often dynamic, blurring the lines around a singular understanding of what makes a language:

Linguistic: focused on lexical and grammatical differences, or on variations within speech communities
Social: focused on cultural or political factors, as well as heritage and identity

For the purposes of measurement, the researchers use the ISO 693-3 set of criteria, which accounts for related varieties and dialects—ensuring that linguistics are not the only factor considered in this count of languages.

Here are the language origins of the 100 most spoken languages:

The-100-Most-Spoken-Languages-in-the-World_Supplemental

Indo-European languages have the widest spread worldwide. According to Ethnologue, the language family contains over 3 billion speakers in total. Interestingly, there are actually 1,526 Niger-Congo languages altogether, though only 12 are represented here.

Let’s now dive into the top 10 most spoken languages overall.

Which Languages Have the Most Speakers?

It comes as no surprise that English reigns supreme, with over 1.1 billion total speakers—or roughly 15% of the global population. Mandarin Chinese, Hindi, Spanish, and French round out the top five.

Rank	Language	Total Speakers	Language Origin
1	English	1,132 million	Indo-European
2	Mandarin Chinese	1,117 million	Sino-Tibetan
3	Hindi	615 million	Indo-European
4	Spanish	534 million	Indo-European
5	French	280 million	Indo-European
6	Standard Arabic	274 million	Afro-Asiatic
7	Bengali	265 million	Indo-European
8	Russian	258 million	Indo-European
9	Portuguese	234 million	Indo-European
10	Indonesian	199 million	Austronesian

However, this is only one piece in the full fabric of languages.

The metrics for native speakers tell a slightly different tale, as Mandarin Chinese shoots up to 918 million—almost 2.5x that of English native speakers.

Rank	Language	Native Speakers	Language Origin
1	Mandarin Chinese	918 million	Sino-Tibetan
2	Spanish	460 million	Indo-European
3	English	379 million	Indo-European
4	Hindi	341 million	Indo-European
5	Bengali	228 million	Indo-European
6	Portuguese	221 million	Indo-European
7	Russian	154 million	Indo-European
8	Japanese	128 million	Japanic
9	Western Punjabi	93 million	Indo-European
10	Marathi	83 million	Indo-European

Note: No native speaker data was available for Filipino, Standard Arabic, Nigerian Pidgin, or Cameroonian Pidgin.

Here, Spanish comes in strong second for native speakers with 460 million, considering it’s well-used across Latin America. The Indian languages of Hindi and Bengali cap off the top five by native speakers as well.

These are the biggest languages people learn growing up, but what about the ones they pick up later in life?

What About Second (L2) Languages?

Nearly 43% of the world’s population is bilingual, with the ability to switch between two languages with ease.

From the data, second language (L2) speakers can be calculated by looking at the difference between native and total speakers, as a proportion of the total. For example, 66% of English speakers learned it as a second language.

Swahili surprisingly has the highest ratio of L2 speakers to total speakers—although it only has 16 million native speakers, this shoots up to 98 million total speakers. Overall, 82% of Swahili speakers know it as a second language.

Swahili is listed as a national or official language in several African countries: Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. It’s likely that the movement of people from rural areas into big cities in search of better economic opportunities, is what’s boosting the adoption of Swahili as a second language.

Indonesian is another similar example. With a 78% proportion of L2 speakers compared to total speakers, this variation on the Malay language has been used as the lingua franca across the islands for a long time. In contrast, only 17% of Mandarin speakers know it as a second language, perhaps because it is one of the most challenging languages to learn.

Keeping Language Traditions Alive

Languages are fluid, and constantly evolving—altogether, the 100 most spoken languages paint a unique picture across centuries of a changing world. Here’s the full list of these languages, by types of speakers and language origin.

Rank	Language	Total Speakers	Native Speakers	Origin
1	English	1,132M	379M	Indo-European
2	Mandarin Chinese	1,117M	918M	Sino-Tibetan
3	Hindi	615M	341M	Indo-European
4	Spanish	534M	460M	Indo-European
5	French	280M	77M	Indo-European
6	Standard Arabic	274M	NA	Afro-Asiatic
7	Bengali	265M	228M	Indo-European
8	Russian	258M	154M	Indo-European
9	Portuguese	234M	221M	Indo-European
10	Indonesian	199M	43M	Austronesian
11	Urdu	170M	69M	Indo-European
12	Standard German	132M	76M	Indo-European
13	Japanese	128M	128M	Japanic
14	Swahili	98M	16M	Niger-Congo
15	Marathi	95M	83M	Indo-European
16	Telugu	93M	82M	Dravidian
17	Western Punjabi	93M	93M	Indo-European
18	Wu Chinese	82M	81M	Sino-Tibetan
19	Tamil	81M	75M	Dravidian
20	Turkish	80M	69M	Turkic
21	Korean	77M	77M	Koreanic
22	Vietnamese	77M	76M	Austronesian
23	Yue Chinese	74M	73M	Sino-Tibetan
24	Javanese	68M	68M	Austronesian
25	Italian	68M	65M	Indo-European
26	Egyptian Spoken Arabic	65M	65M	Afro-Asiatic
27	Hausa	63M	44M	Afro-Asiatic
28	Thai	61M	21M	Kra-Dai
29	Gujarati	61M	56M	Indo-European
30	Kannada	56M	44M	Dravidian
31	Iranian Persian	53M	53M	Indo-European
32	Bhojpuri	52M	52M	Indo-European
33	Southern Min Chinese	50M	50M	Sino-Tibetan
34	Hakka Chinese	48M	48M	Sino-Tibetan
35	Jinyu Chinese	47M	47M	Sino-Tibetan
36	Filipino	45M	NA	Austronesian
37	Burmese	43M	33M	Sino-Tibetan
38	Polish	40M	40M	Indo-European
39	Yoruba	40M	38M	Niger-Congo
40	Odia	38M	34M	Indo-European
41	Malayalam	38M	37M	Dravidian
42	Xiang Chinese	37M	37M	Sino-Tibetan
43	Maithili	34M	34M	Indo-European
44	Ukrainian	33M	27M	Indo-European
45	Moroccan Spoken Arabic	33M	27M	Afro-Asiatic
46	Eastern Punjabi	33M	33M	Indo-European
47	Sunda	32M	32M	Austronesian
48	Algerian Spoken Arabic	32M	29M	Afro-Asiatic
49	Sudanese Spoken Arabic	32M	32M	Afro-Asiatic
50	Nigerian Pidgin	30M	NA	Indo-European
51	Zulu	28M	12M	Niger-Congo
52	Igbo	27M	27M	Niger-Congo
53	Amharic	26M	22M	Afro-Asiatic
54	Northern Uzbek	25M	25M	Turkic
55	Sindhi	25M	25M	Indo-European
56	North Levantine Spoken Arabic	25M	25M	Afro-Asiatic
57	Nepali	25M	16M	Indo-European
58	Romanian	24M	24M	Indo-European
59	Tagalog	24M	24M	Austronesian
60	Dutch	23M	23M	Indo-European
61	Sa'idi Spoken Arabic	22M	22M	Afro-Asiatic
62	Gan Chinese	22M	22M	Sino-Tibetan
63	Northern Pashto	21M	21M	Indo-European
64	Magahi	21M	21M	Indo-European
65	Saraiki	20M	20M	Indo-European
66	Xhosa	19M	8M	Niger-Congo
67	Malay	19M	16M	Austronesian
68	Khmer	18M	17M	Austronesian
69	Afrikaans	18M	7M	Indo-European
70	Sinhala	17M	15M	Indo-European
71	Somali	16M	16M	Afro-Asiatic
72	Chhattisgarhi	16M	16M	Indo-European
73	Cebuano	16M	16M	Austronesian
74	Mesopotamian Spoken Arabic	16M	16M	Afro-Asiatic
75	Assamese	15M	15M	Indo-European
76	Northeastern Thai	15M	15M	Kra-Dai
77	Northern Kurdish	15M	15M	Indo-European
78	Hijazi Spoken Arabic	15M	15M	Afro-Asiatic
79	Nigerian Fulfulde	14M	14M	Niger-Congo
80	Bavarian	14M	14M	Indo-European
81	Bamanankan	14M	4M	Niger-Congo
82	South Azerbaijani	14M	14M	Turkic
83	Northern Sotho	14M	5M	Niger-Congo
84	Setswana	14M	6M	Niger-Congo
85	Souther Sotho	14M	6M	Niger-Congo
86	Czech	13M	11M	Indo-European
87	Greek	13M	13M	Indo-European
88	Chittagonian	13M	13M	Indo-European
89	Kazakh	13M	13M	Turkic
90	Swedish	13M	10M	Indo-European
91	Deccan	13M	13M	Indo-European
92	Hungarian	13M	13M	Uralic
93	Jula	12M	2M	Niger-Congo
94	Sadri	12M	5M	Indo-European
95	Kinyarwanda	12M	12M	Niger-Congo
96	Cameroonian Pidgin	12M	NA	Indo-European
97	Sylheti	12M	10M	Indo-European
98	South Levantine Spoken Arabic	12M	12M	Afro-Asiatic
99	Tunisian Spoken Arabic	12M	12M	Afro-Asiatic
100	Sanaani Spoken Arabic	11M	11M	Afro-Asiatic

One reason these languages are popular is that they are actively and consistently used. Unfortunately, nearly 3,000 (about 40%) of all languages are at risk of being lost, or are already in the process of dying out today.

Languages play a crucial role in our daily lives. … [Their] losses have huge negative impacts indigenous peoples’ most basic human rights.

—UN, IYoIL statement

As a result, the United Nations declared 2019 the International Year of Indigenous Languages (IYoIL), with a resolution to continue fostering these languages and pass on their knowledge for future generations.

Related Topics:africa languages english chinese spanish native speakers world languages total speakers hindi mandarin swahili

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Demographics

Visualizing Population Density Patterns in Six Countries

These maps show the population density of several countries, using 3D spikes to denote where more people live.

Creator Program

Published

5 days ago

February 3, 2023

Pallavi Rao

beautifully rendered population density maps of six major countries

As of 2022, Earth has 8 billion humans. By 2050, the population is projected to grow to 10 billion.

In the last 100 years, the global population more than quadrupled. But none of this growth has been evenly spread out, including within countries.

This series of 3D maps from Terence Teo, an associate professor at Seton Hall University, renders the population density of six countries using open-source data from Kontur Population. He used popular programming language R and a path-tracing package, Rayshader, to create the maps.

France and Germany: Population Density Spikes and Troughs

Let’s take a look at how the population spreads out in different countries around the world. Click the images to explore higher-resolution versions.

France is the world’s 7th largest economy and second-most-populous country in the EU with 65 million people. But a staggering one-fifth of the French population lives in Paris and its surrounding metro—the most populous urban area in Europe.

Many residents in the Paris metropolitan area are employed in the service sector, which makes up one-third of France’s $2.78 trillion gross domestic product.

Unlike France, Germany has many dense cities and regions, with Berlin, Munich, Stuttgart, and Cologne all having over a million residents. Berlin is the most populated at 3.5 million residents in the city proper, and 6 million in the wider urban area.

That said, the relatively recent reunification of West and East Germany in 1991 meant that post-WWII growth was mostly concentrated in West Germany (and West Berlin).

Italy and Chile: Coast to Coast

In Italy, another phenomenon affects population density and urban development—a sprawling coastline.

Despite having a large population of 59 million and large metropolitan areas throughout, Italy’s population spikes are closer to the water.

The port cities of Genoa, Napoli, and Palermo all have large spikes relative to the rest of the country, as does the capital, Rome. Despite its city center located 15 miles inland from the sea, it extends to the shore through the district of Ostia, where the ancient port of Rome existed.

Meanwhile in Chile, stuck between the Andes to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west, population spikes corroborate with its many port towns and cities.

However, the country is more concentrated than Italy, with 40% of its residents congregating around the capital of Santiago.

Turkey and Canada: Marred by Mountains and Climes

Though Chile has difficulties with terrain, it is relatively consistent. Other countries have to attempt to settle many different climes—regions defined by their climates.

Mountains to the south and east, a large, semi-arid plateau, and even a small desert leave few centers of urban growth in Türkiye.

Predictably, further west, as the elevation comes down to the Aegean and Mediterranean Seas, population spikes begin to heighten. The largest of course is the economic and cultural hub of Istanbul, though the capital Ankara is also prominent with more than 5 million residents.

In Canada, the Rocky Mountains to the west and freezing cold temperatures in the center and north account for the large country’s relative emptiness.

Though population spikes in Western Canada are growing rapidly, highly populous urban centers are noticeably concentrated along the St. Lawrence River, with the Greater Toronto Area accounting for more than one-sixth of the country’s 39 million people.

Increasing Urbanization

According to the World Bank, more than half of the world’s population currently lives in cities, and that trend is only growing.

By 2050, 7 out of 10 people are projected to live in cities. This congregation makes cities a beehive of productivity and innovation—with more than 80% of the world’s GDP being generated at these population centers.

It’s in this context that mapping and studying urban development becomes all the more important, particularly as policymakers try their hand at sustainable urban planning.

As Teo puts it:

“By showing where people are (and are not), they show us where political and economic power is concentrated, and perhaps where and who our governments represent.”