The most spoken languages in the world
The top 3 according to 0 votes from people: English · Mandarin Chinese · Hindi. (Updated Sep 11, 2026.)
According to Ethnologue 2026, counting native and second-language speakers: these are the languages with the most speakers in the world. Indonesian is in the top ten! Which ones do you speak?
Automatically translated (original in Bahasa Indonesia). See the original
Top 25
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1
English
About 1.5 billion speakers, most of them as a second language.
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2
Mandarin Chinese
More than 1.1 billion speakers, mostly native.
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3
Hindi
About 611 million speakers.
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4
Spanish
About 561 million speakers.
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5
Modern Standard Arabic
About 335 million, all as a second language.
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6
French
About 334 million speakers on five continents.
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7
Bengali
About 274 million speakers.
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8
Portuguese
About 269 million speakers.
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9
Indonesian
About 255 million speakers, mostly as a second language.
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10
Urdu
About 246 million speakers.
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11
Russian
About 210 million speakers.
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12
German
About 133 million speakers.
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13
Japanese
About 126 million, almost all native speakers.
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14
Nigerian Pidgin
About 121 million, mainly as a second language.
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15
Egyptian Arabic
About 118 million speakers.
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16
Marathi
About 99 million speakers.
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17
Vietnamese
About 97 million speakers.
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18
Telugu
About 96 million speakers.
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19
Swahili
About 95 million, mostly as a second language.
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20
Hausa
About 94 million speakers.
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21
Turkish
About 94 million speakers.
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22
Western Punjabi
About 90 million speakers.
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23
Tagalog
About 87 million speakers.
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24
Tamil
About 86 million speakers.
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25
Yue Chinese (Cantonese)
About 86 million speakers.
How is this ranking ordered? By people's votes: each ▲ adds a point and each ▼ takes one away. Anyone can vote and add what is missing.
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