How many people speak that language?
There are about 7 100 living languages, and half the world speaks one of the top 25.
1.22 × Korean
100,000,000 speakers is more than 4 of the 11 references on this page.
Reference figures are measurements and are rounded; the unit conversion behind them is exact.
| Reference | Size | Yours ÷ theirs | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Welsh | 900,000 speakers | 111× | |
| Swedish | 13,000,000 speakers | 7.69× | |
| Dutch | 25,000,000 speakers | 4× | |
| Korean | 82,000,000 speakers | 1.22× | |
| Japanese | 123,000,000 speakers | 0.813× | |
| Russian | 255,000,000 speakers | 0.392× | |
| Arabic | 274,000,000 speakers | 0.365× | |
| Spanish | 560,000,000 speakers | 0.179× | |
| Hindi | 610,000,000 speakers | 0.164× | |
| Mandarin Chinese | 1,140,000,000 speakers | 1/11.4 | |
| English | 1,520,000,000 speakers | 1/15.2 | Including second-language speakers |
Worth knowing
- English has about three times as many second-language speakers as native ones — the only major language where that is true.
- About 40% of the world’s 7 100 languages are endangered, most with fewer than a thousand speakers.
Frequently asked
What is the most spoken language?
English by total speakers, at about 1.5 billion. Mandarin Chinese by native speakers, at about 940 million.
How many languages are there?
Around 7 100 living languages by Ethnologue’s count, though where a dialect ends and a language begins is a political question as much as a linguistic one.