Language speaker data

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This page preserves some of the data used for List of languages by number of native speakers and other articles. Note that lists such as this may vary somewhat depending upon the definition given to certain terms. In particular, the exact difference between "dialect" and "language" is often important.

An example of where this can have an impact is the case of Arabic, which can be considered either a single language or a group of related languages. The World Almanac, the CIA World Factbook, and Ethnologue, the sources of the tables given below, consider the varieties of Arabic to be separate languages. If the spoken varieties listed by Ethnologue are considered as forms of a single Arabic language, it appears in fourth place with about 220 million speakers.

A similar situation occurs with Chinese. If all the varieties of Chinese are counted as a single language, then Chinese appears in first place with over 1.2 billion speakers. If counted separately, then five varieties of Chinese are found in the top 25.

Note that these lists only take into account first-language (native) speakers. Counting second language speakers is extremely difficult and approximate at best.

Contents

[edit] Summary table

Values presented are in millions, and sorted by median, including languages with 70 million or more primary speakers. Because different sources break down the languages differently, this table can be used to determine relative popularity, but not to determine absolute ordinal ranks.

Language ETH WAM CIA SIL ENC WEB Median
Chinese — all 937 937
Mandarin Chinese 885 874 874 836 1200 874
Spanish 332 322 339 332 332 332 332
English 322 309 341 322 322 322 322
Hindi/Urdu 182 496 366 182 333 250 291.5
Arabic — all 256 174 186 200 193
Bengali 189 215 207 189 189 185 189
Malay/Indonesian 176 176
Portuguese 181 194 167 170 170 160 170
Russian 145 275 160 170 170 160 165
Japanese 127 125 125 125 125 125
German 120 100 98 98 100 100
Wu Chinese 92.5 92.5
Punjabi 89 90 89.5
Javanese 75.5 80 77.75
Korean 75 78 76.5
French 72 129 77 79 72 75 76
Marathi 71.8 71.8
  • ETH = Ethnologue (1999)
  • WAM = World Almanac (2005)
  • CIA = CIA Factbook (2000)
  • SIL = (1998) Summer Institute for Linguistics (SIL) Ethnologue Survey [1]
  • ENC = (1998) Encarta [2]
  • WEB (1997) “The World’s 10 Most Influential Languages” in Language Today [3]

[edit] Specific lists

[edit] Ethnologue estimate (1999)

The following table is based largely on a list of the world's top 100 languages published by Ethnologue in 1999. [4] Many of the estimates in the original table were for years prior to 1999.

  1. Mandarin Chinese: 885 million speakers
  2. Spanish: 332
  3. English: 322
  4. Bengali: 189
  5. Hindi: 182
  6. Portuguese: 181
  7. Russian: 145
  8. Japanese: 127
  9. German: 120
  10. Wu Chinese: 90-95
  11. Punjabi: 89 1
  12. Javanese: 75.5
  13. Korean: 75
  14. French: 72
  15. Marathi: 71.8
  16. Turkish: 67.7
  17. Vietnamese: 67.4
  18. Telugu: 66.4
  19. Cantonese (Yue Chinese): 65-70
  20. Tamil: 63.1
  21. Italian: 61.5
  22. Urdu: 58
  23. Min Nan Chinese: > 50
  24. Ukrainian: 47.8
  25. Egyptian Arabic: 46.3
  26. Jin Chinese: 45
  27. Gujarati: 46.1
  28. Polish: 42.7
  29. Kurdish: 40
  30. Xiang Chinese: 40
  31. Persian: 31.3 2
  32. Malayalam: 35.8
  33. Hakka Chinese: 34
  34. Kannada: 33.7
  35. Azerbaijani: 32 3
  36. Oriya: 31
  37. Sunda: 27
  38. Bhojpuri: 26.6
  39. Gan Chinese: 25
  40. Maithili: 24.3
  41. Hausa: 24.2
  42. Romanian: 23.5
  43. Dutch: 22.8
  44. Burmese: 22
  45. Sindhi: 21.4
  46. Algerian Arabic: 21.1
  47. Awadhi: 20.5
  48. Thai: 20.2
  49. Yoruba: 20

Note 1: Punjabi is separated into two languages by Ethnologue: Western Punjabi (60,647,207) and Eastern Punjabi (27,109,000). In addition, the Mirpur dialect (1,022,000) is also taken into account. This total is based on new figures in the 15th edition.
Note 2: Ethnologue splits Persian into two languages: Eastern Persian (7 million) and Western Persian (24.28 million).
Note 3: Azerbaijani is split by Ethnologue into North Azerbaijani (about 7 mln. speakers) and South Azerbaijani (about 24.4 mln. speakers).

[edit] World Almanac estimates (2005)

The World Almanac 2005 estimates for first and second language speakers are as follows:

  1. Mandarin Chinese 874 million
  2. English 514 million
  3. Hindustani 496 million
  4. Spanish 425 million
  5. Russian 275 million
  6. Arabic 256 million
  7. Bengali 215 million
  8. Portuguese 194 million
  9. Malay/Indonesian 176 million
  10. French 129 million

[edit] CIA World Factbook estimates (2006)

The CIA World Factbook provides the following estimates of "first language" speakers for the year 2004 (percentage of world population; CIA's July 2006 estimate for world population is 6,525,170,264 [5]). Population mid-2004, when these figures were most accurate, was 6370 million. The absolute numbers below are the percentage of this figure.

  1. Mandarin Chinese 13.69% (872 million)
  2. Spanish 5.05% (322 million)
  3. English 4.84% (308 million)
  4. Hindi 2.82% (180 million)
  5. Portuguese 2.77% (176 million)
  6. Bengali 2.68% (171 million)
  7. Russian 2.27% (145 million)
  8. Japanese 1.99% (127 million)
  9. Standard German 1.49% (95 million)
  10. Wu Chinese 1.21% (77 million)

Source: CIA - The World Factbook -- World

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ http://www2.ignatius.edu/faculty/turner/languages.htm
  2. ^ http://www2.ignatius.edu/faculty/turner/languages.htm
  3. ^ http://www2.ignatius.edu/faculty/turner/languages.htm
  4. ^ http://web.archive.org/web/19990429232804/www.sil.org/ethnologue/top100.html
  5. ^ [1]

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../l/a/n/Language_speaker_data.html"
In other languages