This article ranks human languages by their number of native speakers.
Current distribution of human language families
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However, all such rankings should be used with caution, because it is not possible to devise a coherent set of linguistic criteria for distinguishing languages in a dialect continuum.[1]For example, a language is often defined as a set of varieties that are mutually intelligible, but independent national standard languages may be considered to be separate languages even though they are largely mutually intelligible, as in the case of Danish and Norwegian.[2]Conversely, many commonly accepted languages, including German, Italian and even English, encompass varieties that are not mutually intelligible.[1]While Arabic is sometimes considered a single language centred on Modern Standard Arabic, other authors describe its mutually unintelligible varieties as separate languages.[3]Similarly, Chinese is sometimes viewed as a single language due to shared culture and a single written form.It is also common to describe various Chinese dialect groups, such as Mandarin, Wu and Yue, as languages, even though each of these groups contains many mutually unintelligible varieties.[4]
There are also difficulties in obtaining reliable counts of speakers, which vary over time due to population change and language shift.In some areas, there is no reliable census data, the data is not current, or the census may not record languages spoken, or record them ambiguously.Sometimes speaker populations are exaggerated for political reasons, or speakers of minority languages may be under-reported in favour of a national language.[5]
Top languages by populationEthnologue (2019, 22nd edition)
The following 90 languages are listed as having at least 10 million first language speakers in the 2019 edition of Ethnologue, a language reference published by SIL International, which is based in the United States.[6]
Nationalencyklopedin (2010)
The following table contains the top 100 languages by estimated number of native speakers in the 2007 edition of the Swedish encyclopedia Nationalencyklopedin. As census methods in different countries vary to a considerable extent, and given that some countries do not record language in their censuses, any list of languages by native speakers, or total speakers, is effectively based on estimates. Updated estimates from 2010 are also provided.[8]
The top eleven languages have additional figures from the 2010 edition of the Nationalencyklopedin. Numbers above 95 million are rounded off to the nearest 5 million.
Charts and graphs
See also
Notes
References
External links
Retrieved from 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers&oldid=899712098'
This is a list of languages by the total number of speakers.
Background[edit]Number Languages In The World
Lists such as these should be used with caution, for the following reasons:
Ethnologue (2019, 22nd edition)[edit]
The following 32 languages are listed as having 50 million or more total speakers in the 2019 edition of Ethnologue, a language reference published by SIL International, which is based in the United States.[3] Entries identified by Ethnologue as macrolanguages are not included in this section.
Wikipedia also lists other languages as having 50 million or more total speakers. For example, the Wikipedia page for the Tagalog language reports 70+ million speakers by as early as 2000 and 73+ million speakers by 2013: 28 million L1 (first language) speakers as of 2007 and 45 million L2 (second language) speakers as of 2013. However, Tagalog is not included in this section because Ethnologue reports it as having only 23+ million total speakers.[4]
Speaker totals are generally not reliable because they sum estimates from different dates and sources, usually uncited. Language information is not collected by most national censuses.
See also[edit]
Notes[edit]References[edit]
External links[edit]
Retrieved from 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_languages_by_total_number_of_speakers&oldid=903801848'
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