Most widely spoken languages

Estimate: the number of people who use the language, summed over all countries, according to CLDR – including second-language speakers.

1. English 1.7 billion
2. Chinese 中文 1.3 billion
3. Hindi हिन्दी 580 million
4. Spanish español 512 million
5. Arabic العربية 379 million
6. French français 333 million
7. Urdu اردو 313 million
8. Bangla বাংলা 280 million
9. Portuguese português 249 million
10. Punjabi ਪੰਜਾਬੀ 220 million
11. Russian русский 208 million
12. Swahili Kiswahili 194 million

All languages →

Language families

Classification by Glottolog. In brackets – languages on this site.

• Indo-European (144)
• Sino-Tibetan (15)
• Afro-Asiatic (27)
• Atlantic-Congo (89)
• Austronesian (50)
• Turkic (15)
• Uralic (11)
• Dravidian (9)
• Austroasiatic (8)
• Tai-Kadai (7)
• Japonic (1)
• Koreanic (1)
• Mongolic (2)
• Kartvelian (2)
• Nakh-Daghestanian (5)
• Abkhaz-Adyghe (3)
• Mande (11)
• Nilotic (7)
• Quechuan (2)
• Aymaran (1)
• Tupian (1)
• Mayan (7)
• Eskimo-Aleut (2)
• Athabaskan-Eyak-Tlingit (4)
• Algic (1)
• Hmong-Mien (1)
• Kru (3)
• Songhay (1)
• Ta-Ne-Omotic (1)
• Khoe-Kwadi (1)
• Xincan (1)
• Furan (1)
• Language isolates (1)
• Other and unclassified (2)