LangMagic

The World of Languages

Most spoken languages in the world

By total speakers, English comes first with about 1.49 billion. By native speakers, Mandarin Chinese leads with about 988 million. Here are all 38 languages with 50 million or more speakers.

#LanguageFamilyNative (L1)Second language (L2)Total
1EnglishIndo-European372 million1.12 billion1.49 billion
2Mandarin ChineseSino-Tibetan988 million194 million1.18 billion
3HindiIndo-European347 million264 million611 million
4SpanishIndo-European487 million75 million561 million
5Modern Standard ArabicAfro-Asiatic0335 million335 million
6FrenchIndo-European75 million258 million334 million
7BengaliIndo-European234 million43 million274 million
8PortugueseIndo-European252 million18 million269 million
9IndonesianAustronesian78 million177 million255 million
10UrduIndo-European78 million168 million246 million
11RussianIndo-European133 million77 million210 million
12Standard GermanIndo-European76 million57 million133 million
13JapaneseJaponic124 million2 million126 million
14Nigerian PidginEnglish Creole5 million116 million121 million
15Egyptian ArabicAfro-Asiatic83 million35 million118 million
16MarathiIndo-European83 million16 million99 million
17VietnameseAustroasiatic86 million11 million97 million
18TeluguDravidian83 million13 million96 million
19SwahiliNiger–Congo4 million91 million95 million
20HausaAfro-Asiatic58 million36 million94 million
21TurkishTurkic86 million7 million94 million
22Western PunjabiIndo-European––90 million
23TagalogAustronesian33 million54 million87 million
24TamilDravidian79 million8 million86 million
25Yue ChineseSino-Tibetan85 million1 million86 million
26Wu ChineseSino-Tibetan83 million500,00083 million
27Iranian PersianIndo-European65 million17 million82 million
28KoreanKoreanic82 million1 million82 million
29AmharicAfro-Asiatic39 million39 million78 million
30ThaiKra–Dai27 million44 million71 million
31JavaneseAustronesian––69 million
32ItalianIndo-European60 million6 million66 million
33GujaratiIndo-European58 million5 million62 million
34KannadaDravidian44 million15 million59 million
35Levantine ArabicAfro-Asiatic55 million3 million58 million
36Sudanese ArabicAfro-Asiatic43 million11 million54 million
37YorubaNiger-Congo48 million5 million53 million
38BhojpuriIndo-European53 million500,00053 million

Source: Ethnologue (2026), as listed in the Wikipedia article List of languages by total number of speakers. Ethnologue counts Arabic varieties separately: Modern Standard Arabic has no native speakers in its count, while Egyptian, Levantine and Sudanese Arabic are listed on their own. Tap a column heading to sort.

The 26 languages in this guide

  1. English1.49 billion
  2. Mandarin Chinese1.18 billion
  3. Hindi611 million
  4. Spanish561 million
  5. Arabic481 million
  6. French334 million
  7. Bengali274 million
  8. Portuguese269 million
  9. Indonesian255 million
  10. Russian210 million
  11. German133 million
  12. Japanese126 million
  13. Vietnamese97 million
  14. Swahili95 million
  15. Turkish94 million
  16. Persian82 million
  17. Korean82 million
  18. Thai71 million
  19. Italian66 million
  20. Polish42.6 million
  21. Ukrainian39 million
  22. Dutch30 million
  23. Greek13.1 million
  24. Hebrew9.3 million
  25. Serbian8.2 million
  26. Welsh538,300
Native (L1)Second language (L2)

Ethnologue figures (mostly the 2026 edition, as listed on Wikipedia); smaller languages use the latest figure cited on their Wikipedia or Wikidata entry, shown with its year on each language page. Welsh is from the 2021 census.

Frequently asked questions

What is the most spoken language in the world?

By total number of speakers, English (about 1.49 billion including second-language speakers), according to Ethnologue 2026. By native speakers, Mandarin Chinese comes first with about 988 million.

What are the top 5 most spoken languages?

English (1.49 billion), Mandarin Chinese (1.18 billion), Hindi (611 million), Spanish (561 million), Modern Standard Arabic (335 million), by total speakers (Ethnologue 2026).

How many languages have more than 100 million speakers?

15 languages, counting native and second-language speakers together (Ethnologue 2026).

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