List of languages by number of native speakers

Below is a List of languages by number of native speakers.Mikael Parkvall, "Världens 100 största språk 2007" (The World's 100 Largest Languages in 2007), in Nationalencyklopedin.  Asterisks mark the 2010 estimates  for the top dozen languages.

Over half the world's population speaks the 15 most used native languages. They are listed here. They are from the Swedish Nationalencyklopedin (2007, 2010).

The distinction between language and dialect is often not clear. Some mutually intelligible versions have been unified."Mutually intelligible": each side can understand the other side. These include Indonesian and Malay; Croatian, Bosnian, and Serbian. It does not include standard Hindi and Urdu. Hindustani has been divided here into the sociolinguistic units of Hindi and Urdu, but at least 100 million speakers of some Hindi dialects are not counted below. 

RankLanguageNative speakers% of world populationMainly spoken inLanguage family1Mandarin955,000,00014.4%East AsiaSino-Tibetan2Spanish386,000,0006.15%Latin America, United States, Spain, Equational GuineaIndo-European3English360,000,0005.43%United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New ZealandIndo-European4Hindi310,000,0004.70%South AsiaIndo-European5Arabic295,000,0004.43%Middle East, North AfricaAfro-Asiatic6Portuguese215,000,0003.27%Brazil, PortugalIndo-European7Bengali205,000,0003.11%South AsiaIndo-European8Russian155,000,0002.33%Eastern Europe, SiberiaIndo-European9Japanese125,000,0001.90%JapanJapanese10Punjabi102,000,0001.44%South AsiaIndo-European11Turkish90,000,0001.42%Anatolia, Balkans, Middle East, Central and West Europe, North Africa, CaucasusTurkic12German89,000,0001.39%Central EuropeIndo-European13Vietnamese85,000,0001.34%VietnamAustroasiatic14Javanese82,000,0001.25%IndonesiaAustronesian15Wu80,000,0001.20%ChinaSino-Tibetan16Malay/Indonesian77,000,0001.16%Southeast AsiaAustronesian17Telugu76,000,0001.15%IndiaDravidian

 Related pages 

 List of endangered languages

 References 

Category:Language-related lists