Ranked: The 100 Most Spoken Languages Around the World

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:

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.

RankLanguageTotal SpeakersLanguage Origin

1English1,132 millionIndo-European

2Mandarin Chinese1,117 millionSino-Tibetan

3Hindi615 millionIndo-European

4Spanish534 millionIndo-European

5French280 millionIndo-European

6Standard Arabic274 millionAfro-Asiatic

7Bengali265 millionIndo-European

8Russian258 millionIndo-European

9Portuguese234 millionIndo-European

10Indonesian199 millionAustronesian

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.

RankLanguageNative SpeakersLanguage Origin

1Mandarin Chinese918 millionSino-Tibetan

2Spanish460 millionIndo-European

3English379 millionIndo-European

4Hindi341 millionIndo-European

5Bengali228 millionIndo-European

6Portuguese221 millionIndo-European

7Russian154 millionIndo-European

8Japanese128 millionJapanic

9Western Punjabi93 millionIndo-European

10Marathi83 millionIndo-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.

RankLanguageTotal SpeakersNative SpeakersOrigin

1English1,132M379MIndo-European

2Mandarin Chinese1,117M918MSino-Tibetan

3Hindi615M341MIndo-European

4Spanish534M460MIndo-European

5French280M77MIndo-European

6Standard Arabic274MNAAfro-Asiatic

7Bengali265M228MIndo-European

8Russian258M154MIndo-European

9Portuguese234M221MIndo-European

10Indonesian199M43MAustronesian

11Urdu170M69MIndo-European

12Standard German132M76MIndo-European

13Japanese128M128MJapanic

14Swahili98M16MNiger-Congo

15Marathi95M83MIndo-European

16Telugu93M82MDravidian

17Western Punjabi93M93MIndo-European

18Wu Chinese82M81MSino-Tibetan

19Tamil81M75MDravidian

20Turkish80M69MTurkic

21Korean77M77MKoreanic

22Vietnamese77M76MAustronesian

23Yue Chinese74M73MSino-Tibetan

24Javanese68M68MAustronesian

25Italian68M65MIndo-European

26Egyptian Spoken Arabic65M65MAfro-Asiatic

27Hausa63M44MAfro-Asiatic

28Thai61M21MKra-Dai

29Gujarati61M56MIndo-European

30Kannada56M44MDravidian

31Iranian Persian53M53MIndo-European

32Bhojpuri52M52MIndo-European

33Southern Min Chinese50M50MSino-Tibetan

34Hakka Chinese48M48MSino-Tibetan

35Jinyu Chinese47M47MSino-Tibetan

36Filipino45MNAAustronesian

37Burmese43M33MSino-Tibetan

38Polish40M40MIndo-European

39Yoruba40M38MNiger-Congo

40Odia38M34MIndo-European

41Malayalam38M37MDravidian

42Xiang Chinese37M37MSino-Tibetan

43Maithili34M34MIndo-European

44Ukrainian33M27MIndo-European

45Moroccan Spoken Arabic33M27MAfro-Asiatic

46Eastern Punjabi33M33MIndo-European

47Sunda32M32MAustronesian

48Algerian Spoken Arabic32M29MAfro-Asiatic

49Sudanese Spoken Arabic32M32MAfro-Asiatic

50Nigerian Pidgin30MNAIndo-European

51Zulu28M12MNiger-Congo

52Igbo27M27MNiger-Congo

53Amharic26M22MAfro-Asiatic

54Northern Uzbek25M25MTurkic

55Sindhi25M25MIndo-European

56North Levantine Spoken Arabic25M25MAfro-Asiatic

57Nepali25M16MIndo-European

58Romanian24M24MIndo-European

59Tagalog24M24MAustronesian

60Dutch23M23MIndo-European

61Sa’idi Spoken Arabic22M22MAfro-Asiatic

62Gan Chinese22M22MSino-Tibetan

63Northern Pashto21M21MIndo-European

64Magahi21M21MIndo-European

65Saraiki20M20MIndo-European

66Xhosa19M8MNiger-Congo

67Malay19M16MAustronesian

68Khmer18M17MAustronesian

69Afrikaans18M7MIndo-European

70Sinhala17M15MIndo-European

71Somali16M16MAfro-Asiatic

72Chhattisgarhi16M16MIndo-European

73Cebuano16M16MAustronesian

74Mesopotamian Spoken Arabic16M16MAfro-Asiatic

75Assamese15M15MIndo-European

76Northeastern Thai15M15MKra-Dai

77Northern Kurdish15M15MIndo-European

78Hijazi Spoken Arabic15M15MAfro-Asiatic

79Nigerian Fulfulde14M14MNiger-Congo

80Bavarian14M14MIndo-European

81Bamanankan14M4MNiger-Congo

82South Azerbaijani14M14MTurkic

83Northern Sotho14M5MNiger-Congo

84Setswana14M6MNiger-Congo

85Souther Sotho14M6MNiger-Congo

86Czech13M11MIndo-European

87Greek13M13MIndo-European

88Chittagonian13M13MIndo-European

89Kazakh13M13MTurkic

90Swedish13M10MIndo-European

91Deccan13M13MIndo-European

92Hungarian13M13MUralic

93Jula12M2MNiger-Congo

94Sadri12M5MIndo-European

95Kinyarwanda12M12MNiger-Congo

96Cameroonian Pidgin12MNAIndo-European

97Sylheti12M10MIndo-European

98South Levantine Spoken Arabic12M12MAfro-Asiatic

99Tunisian Spoken Arabic12M12MAfro-Asiatic

100Sanaani Spoken Arabic11M11MAfro-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.