Languages By Speakers Article Index for
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Languages By Speakers




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This is a list of languages placed in order by the number of native-language speakers, with some data for second-language use. Only languages spoken natively by more than ten million are listed, and then they are listed for secondary locations only when spoken by more than 1% of the population.

For practical reasons in compiling this list, some mutually intelligible idioms with separate national standards or self identification have been listed separately, such as Scandinavian , Hindustani , and Malay . This should NOT be taken as an endorsement of any side of Dialect Versus Language debates.

For the purposes of this article, a " Native Language " is a language with which a person was raised, while a " Second Language " is a language that person would use for instruction or everyday communication outside the home. A person may be natively Multilingual .

Countries that are not Sovereign States are listed according to the corresponding sovereign states.

Data are not all up to date. For a comparison of various estimates, see Language Speaker Data . For languages spoken by very few people, and so in danger of extinction, see List Of Endangered Languages .


100 MILLION NATIVE SPEAKERS OR MORE



30–100 MILLION NATIVE SPEAKERS



10–30 MILLION NATIVE SPEAKERS



3–10 MILLION NATIVE SPEAKERS



1–3 MILLION NATIVE SPEAKERS



FEWER THAN 1 MILLION NATIVE SPEAKERS



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