Ethnologue list of most spoken languages

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This list gives the most spoken languages in the world according to the Ethnologue, a widely cited reference for languages around the world. The Ethnologue is sometimes criticised for using out-of-date data, but there is no available fully authoritative source for numbers of first language speakers which uses the same criteria for counting in each case. Another tendency of the Ethnologue is to separate what many others (sometimes including speakers of the varieties) consider to be single languages: see for example comments in this article on English and German.

This list, based on the 15th edition (2005), aims to count first language speakers only (though there are some difficulties with this criterion, as with any other, caused by issues such as bilingualism, differing perceptions of cultural identity and the questions of when language varieties are to be considered different languages or dialects). It also counts macrolanguages, as defined by the Ethnologue, such that Chinese and Arabic are counted as united languages rather than by the varieties also listed, such as Mandarin Chinese or Egyptian Arabic. The year bracketed next to the number of speakers is the year given in the Ethnologue for when the data was taken (for the country with most speakers).

Ranking by number of native speakers	Language	Number of speakers	Where spoken natively by more than 5% of the population (in order of population, down to 20,000 speakers)	Comments
1	Chinese	1,205m (1999)	People's Republic of China, Republic of China (Taiwan), Malaysia, Singapore	This figure includes all varieties of Chinese such as Mandarin and Cantonese, which are not necessarily mutually intelligible
2	Spanish	322.3m (1995)	Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Spain, United States, Venezuela, Peru, Chile, Cuba, Ecuador, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, Uruguay, Panama, Belize, Andorra, Gibraltar
3	English	309.4m (1984)	United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, Ireland, Singapore, Bermuda, Northern Mariana Islands, Bahamas, Guam, Cayman Islands	Does not include significant populations in countries such as Jamaica and Guyana, where speakers are said to speak creoles. See, List of countries by English-speaking population.
4	Arabic	206m (1998)	Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Iraq, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Syria, Tunisia, Libya, Lebanon, Jordan, Mauritania, Palestinian Territories, Israel, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Chad, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Djibouti, Western Sahara	Figure from all Arabic dialects, which are not necessarily mutually intelligible
5	Hindi	180.8m (1991) (Khariboli dialect only)	India, Fiji	Speakers of the main Khariboli dialect(1991). Indian census (2001) figure is 422m, and represents all Hindi dialects, which the Ethnologue deems mutually unintelligible. Hindi and Urdu are considered as separate languages although they are mutually intelligible when used in everyday conversation. They are written in two different scripts.
6	Portuguese	177.5m (1998)	Brazil, Portugal
7	Bengali	171.1m (1994)	Bangladesh, India
8	Russian	145m (2000)	Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Israel, Moldova, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Estonia, Lithuania, Turkmenistan
9	Japanese	122.4m (1985)	Japan
10	Standard German	95.4m (1994)	Germany, Austria, Switzerland	This figure seems to include Swiss German, even though this is listed under a different code. Ethnologue divides "German" into 18 dialects[1] (Middle and Upper German, not including Low German and Yiddish), totalling to 114.2 million. Including Yiddish and Low Saxon, the total is 118 million.
11	Javanese	75.5m (1989)	Indonesia, Suriname
12	Telugu	69.7m (1997)	India
13	Marathi	68m (1997)	India
14	Vietnamese	67.4m (1999)	Vietnam
15	Korean	67m (1986)	South Korea, North Korea
16	Tamil	66m (1997)	India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia
17	French	64.9m	France, Canada, Belgium, Switzerland, French Guiana, French Polynesia	Figure does not include significant populations in countries such as Haiti and Mauritius, where speakers are said to speak creoles. 14th edition (2000) gives 77m total.
18	Italian	61.5m	Italy, San Marino	Population includes some of whom are native bilinguals of Italian and regional varieties, and some of whom may use Italian as second language. Sicilian is included.
19	Western Panjabi	60.8m (2000)	Pakistan	Figure does not include Eastern Panjabi, spoken in India, 27.1m
20	Urdu	60.5m (1997)	India, Pakistan	Standard Hindi and Urdu are considered as separate languages although they are mutually intelligible when used in everyday conversation. They are written in two different scripts.