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Top 20 Languages of the World
Author: Liz9 Jun
What are the most widely spoken languages in the world? Or, if you are contemplating learning a second language, which will get you the most new conversation opportunities for your effort?
The following list shows number of people speaking a language either as their first or second language. It is taken from Nicholas Ostler’s ‘Empires of the Word’, a detailed (and long!) history of the main world languages.
1. Mandarin Chinese (1,052m)
2. English (508m)
3. Hindi (487m)
4. Spanish (417m)
5. Russian (277m)
6. Bengali (211m)
7. Portugese (191m)
8. German (128m)
9. French (128m)
10. Japanese (126m)
11. Urdu (104m)
12. Korean (78m)
13. Wu Chinese (77m)
14. Javanese (76m)
15. Telugu (75m)
16. Tamil (74m)
17. Yue Chinese / Cantonese (71m)
18. Marathi (71m)
19. Vietnamese (68m)
20. Turkish (61m)
It would be interesting to know how the popularity of these languages is evolving. These figures are nearly 10 years old so in that time the Chinese speaking population has probably increased by around 40 million, for example. Rate of population increase must be the strongest factor in determining whether a language is currently moving up or down this list.
I suspect this list may under-estimate the power of English by not counting those who speak English very competently and use it on a regular basis, but have learnt it as their third or even fourth language. That may sound improbable if you are a native English speaker, but for some it is a necessity. As one example, This post on A Wide Angle View of India blog explains that in many parts of India children grow up learning three languages, of which one is English.
English is currently the most popular choice as language of international communication, but will there come a point where another language becomes so widely spoken that it overtakes English as second language of choice? It may happen sooner than you think.
Update: from the discussion in the comments it is clear that compiling a list like this involves some difficult decisions (such as whether or not Arabic should be included). As an alternative view, this post from The Linguist Blogger incorporates different sources of information as well as Ostler’s list.
More like this:
Is Chinglish the future of English?: most English conversations do not involve a native speaker
Languages fight for global dominance: more about the prospects for English as language of international communication
Gestures say so much: multiple language speakers are more likely to gesticulate when speaking
International Mother Language Day: the importance of learning in the mother tongue
14 Responses for "Top 20 Languages of the World"
Arabic?
Nicholas Ostler’s book is called ‘Empires of the Word’ not ‘Empires of the World’ as stated here.
Interesting list, though why is Arabic excluded? It has over 300 million speakers worldwide!
Katharine - thanks a lot for pointing that out. I have corrected the post.
Kase, Riad - Ostler excluded Arabic from this list because he considers the spoken dialects (as opposed to classical Arabic which is used as lingua franca) to be mutually unintelligible in some cases. Other lists I have seen do contain Arabic though and obviously it would come in quite high on this list.
What do you think? It would be interesting to compare the differences in Arabic dialects with differences in some others which, although similar, are definitely considered to be separate languages (eg Spanish / Portuguese, Hindi / Urdu)
In response to arabic, a lot of the English dialects of the world are unintelligible in some cases. Carribean, and African dialects are completely different from western version.
Am I to understand that you excluded all African and Caribbean nations from this list?
Judging by the number of English speakers(508m) I’d say they were included.
[edited]
I’m minoring in Arabic at the UofArizona and they are teaching us FusHa, or classical Arabic and we’re always asking, “how applicable is this?” but are constantly assured that classical and colloquial Arabic are mutually intelligible and since, as you said, classical is the lingua franca, it is used in mass media, and I’d be able to go to pretty much any Arabic speaking country and be understood, and be able to pick up on local dialect with relative ease. The Egyptian dialect is understood throughout the MidEast because the most popular movies originate there, and the Levantine dialect (Palestine, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon) are just as easily understood because most pop music in the region comes from Lebanon.
As I understand it, it’s basically the equivalent of someone learning Oxford English and trying to make sense of any American dialect.
(Sorry this was so long and boring)
Court - This is a good point. I can’t find any information on whether African and Caribbean nations are included in the list. As you say, the number of English speakers is high though.
Thanks for quoting the book. Perhaps it would help if I add a few comments on Arabic and English as they appear (or not) in this list. This was a list of languages listed by the total of their first- and second-language speakers. (Hence the relatively high figures for English, and Hindi.) In principle, therefore, Caribbean dialects of English will be included. Arabic has lost out in the pecking order, since modern standard Arabic, or FusHa, although it straddles all the Arabic dialect areas, is not at the command of most of their speakers. I added as a footnote:
(the largest Arabic dialect) … Egyptian Arabic, with 46 million speakers, … ranks … no higher than 23rd. The different “dialects” of Arabic, of which there are over 25, offer quite solid barriers to mutual intelligibility, so they are well cast in this list as distinct languages. If they are consolidated as a single hyper-language community, united by the élite’s use of Classical Arabic as a lingua franca, they would amount to something over 205 million, placing them between Bengali and Portuguese.)
In general I gave short shrift to dialect differences in the book, even where they’re substantial. Culturally, no doubt, all these Arabic-speakers feel part of the same language community, and those communities were what I was writing about in the narrative sections of the book. So I could have tried to sum the Arab language community. But they are comparable in difference of intelligibility, I would suggest - contra Kase above, not to English but to Chinese dialects - and these are treated as separate languages in this statistical chapter. (My main source of data was the SIL Ethnologue - and SIL are notorious as ’splitters’ rather than ‘lumpers’ in their approach to languages.)
WAIT!
there are NO italians in the list!!!!!
AAAAARRRRGGGGGGGGG
i would like to know what the level of fluency required is to make it on the list.
for instance, i dont know a whole lot of spanish, but mixing words around (with horrible grammar, i am sure) i can often get my point across. could i have a conversation about aristotle or some sports team in spanish?
i aslo think the level of english has probably raised quite a bit, with the internet. the majority of sites, games, movies etc are in english, and with china, india, japan, germany, france and im sure many others having english be a near-requirement in many schools and universities, a basic understanding of the language has probably gone up by at least 30% more than just the population growth.
Hi Haddon. This list counts people speaking the language either as their first or second language, so they are probably pretty fluent.
I agree with you that there are probably a lot of people who can use a given language for communication (without being fluent) who aren’t counted here, especially in English.
Modern Standard Arabic is understood by people of all dialects and regions. It is true that regional dialects play a huge part in the different ethnicity of Arab nations and regions (i.e. Levantine, Egyptian, etc.) - however, the Arabic that is in the mass media, on television, newspapers, textbooks, school lesson plans, is all universally understood.
No matter where you are in the Arabic world, MSA can be easily understood and picked up regardless of dialect.
(and this is not even mentioning Quranic Arabic, which is not only understood by the 250+ million in the Arab world but nearly universally by the nearly 1 billion Muslims around the world!)
According to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers
Arabic is the 5th.
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