Talk:List of languages by total number of speakers/Archive 1

Archive 1

Made-up figures?

I've looked at this page's sources and I cannot figure out where, for example, they get an estimate for "Chinese" of 1.4 billion speakers. It's not in any of the three sources. In fact even George Weber's high-extreme estimate for Chinese is only 1.2 billion, although that was admittedly over fifteen years ago. I am going to rewrite the figures on this page using only the figures from Ethnologue, because both other sources appear to be at least ten years out of date. I'm also removing the high-extreme figures because they cover native speakers, not total speakers. Khin2718 (talk) 18:40, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Strange numbers for the German- and French-speaking populations prompt me to reconsider the reliability of the website reporting the Ethnologue figures: Wikipedia is also mentioned as a source, which means they might not actually be from Ethnologue after all. Consequently I am also going to refer readers to George Weber's figures.Khin2718 (talk) 19:29, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Hindi/Urdu

250 or 350 Million? --84.113.52.244 (talk) 08:32, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

According to the articles referenced, it is 250 million, which indicates we should revert back to that. It seems that we spend more time on reverting vandalism that getting the facts straight. But is this an article just about George Weber's estimate, or on the actual number? We really need a range of numbers based on a range of references, otherwise this becomes either a wikipediaization of one person's research, or a platform for why my language should higher figures/is more important. OrhanCharles 03:53, 28 May 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by OrhanCharles (talk • contribs)

Not very informative

Don't ya guys think this is too specific? It's not really even a list! It just says: "This is just an estimation!"! I was looking for a way more informative and more 'up-to-date' info. Didn't this come from 1997? What happend to the 21st century?- 6/10/2010, 6:43pm (Central) (Don't you dare, SineBot, sign my IP!!)

(Same Person as last time) WAKE UP WIKIPEDIA! I'm starting to think you guys are stupid! All ya guys care about is the "Most Important" ones. You guy didn't even fix the YOG 2010 (Search Singapore 2010 and you'll find it.) articles, let alone the USA team. I'm gonna stop using Wiki for a moment. Bye! :( —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.170.216.184 (talk) 12:48, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

I dunno if you realize, but you can change the content of the article if you really want to. Why are you complaining that nobody's modified an article that you yourself are perfectly capable of modifying? And, to address your unrelated tangent, if there's no content on the USA YOG team, MAKE IT. =) Like He-Man, you have the POWER!!! --True (talk) 20:58, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Ethnologue disagreement (dubious template)

I know it's been discussed for multiple languages above but the numbers here and in List of languages by number of native speakers differ radically. There are more native speakers than total speakers for at least one language (Hindi/Urdu). Ethnologue is cited as the primary source for both, but Hindi/Urdu cites another, probably less reliable source (BBC language lessons).

Without some standard to reconcile widely differing sources, these articles make no sense. I don't have inclination to sort this out but IMO both articles are dubious as-is. Feel free to either provide better footnotes on what's what or fix the numbers, then delete the dubious template i added. - PhilipR (talk) 13:57, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

George H. J. Weber's estimate

Something is wrong in those numbers. For example:

Number of portuguese native speakers: 220 million

Number of portuguese secondary speakers: 28 million

Total number of native and secondary speakers of portuguese: 188 million

So 220+28=188 ??????????????

French: 75+190 = 270 ???--viriatus (talk) 15:18, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

UPDATE PLEASE

Language counts are so far far out of date here, they should not even be given at all. English and Spanish are both wrong. America has 300 million population, and you only have the whole english language speakers as not much more than that. They must both be at least 400 million now or more. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.13.168.139 (talk) 06:01, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

other estimates

might it be suitable to acknowledge other common estimates? it would only be fair to allow any wellsourced reference... as noted in numerous cases above, there are many counts that are not necessarily any more or less accurate, but are nonetheless left out. common things I might like to see:

• india's (different, and likely far more accurate) census data for hindi
• hindustani the larger group of related dialects has something like 480million co-intelligible speakers
• spanish estimates from mainstream latin america news and scholarly sources .. infobae for instance puts the number at 500million[infobae]

--— robbie ^{page talk} 21:07, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

REally, that make no sense since Brazil has 193 million population and portugal has 11 million. it would be 202 million using portuguese as first language. If we add angola, mozambique, timor and the other portuguese colonies, we get a number around 250 million. it is the true.

201.78.165.232 (talk) 17:17, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Turkish speakers number from 1987?

Hi there the link which is used as reference says "Population 46,300,000 in Turkey (1987). Population total all countries: 50,733,420."

http://www.ethnologue.com/language/tur

Are you serious about using this link as reference?We are in 2013!Please update this page and use the current references.--78.189.170.134 (talk) 09:18, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

Spanish Weber's table

There is an obvious mistake in the Weber's estimate table

. Spanish 395 mill. 20 mill. 3375 mill.

I am not sure what the correct number is (415 mill?) but it's definitely not 3,3 billion — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.242.76.246 (talk) 14:40, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Weber's English Estimate and Reference 36

Somehow, according to the table containing Weber's estimates, 365 million native English speakers plus 150 million second language speakers equals 480 million total speakers. If the native and second language speaker estimates are to be believed, the actual total speaker figure should be 515 million.

The link to reference 36 does not ultimately lead to the referenced source.

MJVEDLMA (talk) 00:32, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

500 million is the current estimate (Hindi 400 million (2011 Census)

Where is the language data of the 2011 India census? I thoroughly checked the Internet and found nothing but "not yet published" !--Loup Solitaire 81 (talk) 17:52, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Telugu twice

Someone pointed me towards Telugu being in the Ethnologue table twice. I'm not sure if one was a mistake, or a test-edit, or a newer citation. No time to dig through the history, so noting it here. HTH. Quiddity (talk) 18:02, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

L2 figure is actually L1 plus L2, in two cases

Re L2 speakers of German, "80 million in Germany (no date)" - is that the figure for the total L1 plus L2? Similar issue for Bengali: "166 million in Bangladesh and 90 million in India (2011 Census)" seems to refer to total speakers. --Chriswaterguy talk 13:27, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

French

Those estimations are ridiculous. 700 million of French speakers? The credibility of wiki is zero. There are around 125 million speakers. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.236.227.138 (talk) 02:09, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

The figures in Highest estimation cited French wikipedia which is in itself forbidden according to WP:CIRCULAR – it's simple: citing oneself gives no credibility but just an infinite acoustic feedback – secondly the French wikipedia cites various articles for each language, which is a blatand example of original research which is forbidden according to WP:OR. The list Highest estimation must as fast as a greased flash get one source giving all figures for all languages measured according to the same method for every language in the list. Otherwise the list must be removed. ... said: Rursus (^mbork³) 10:45, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

The sources given at the bottom of the article should suffice to save the list, except the list must be updated accordingly. The figures might look absurd, but that article measures non-native speakers. France had lots of colonies in the past. ... said: Rursus (^mbork³) 10:55, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

That may be true. But Spain had a lot of more colonies than France and its total estimate is much lower. French is a second language mainly in Canada and some parts of Africa. France plus those areas are not enough to beat Spanish speakers in the Americas. Furthermore, the 700 million figure itself contradicts the French language article where it states that there are only 220 million according to the infobox and 327 million in the introduction total speakers of French. Also Ethnologue puts the total speakers at a much lower estimate Ethnologue with 128 million speakers using French as a first and second language. There shouldn't that much more people speaking it as a third or higher language. Although the data was from 1999, there is no way that 500+ million people would suddenly speak French in 10 years. Elockid ^(Talk·_Contribs) 20:59, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Note that the updated numbers from Ethnologue now give 67M (L1) + 50M (L2) for a total of 117M. European Union numbers are very detailed and accurate, they find 129M people in EU only. Quebec has 6M L1 speakers. Francophone Africa has 115M french (L1+L2) speakers in a population of 335M. Ethnologue numbers are completely out of sync with reality and should not be used for any comparison. However, I can't find any material supporting the 700M number, and I agree it should be replaced by something with data (even dubious data) supporting it. What highest estimation number do you think should be put in this place? Jerome.Abela (talk) 09:04, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

If it was written 700 millions speakers for french before, it is totally ridiculous... The new number of 74 millions speakers is laughable in the other sense... There are neither 700 millions nor are they only 75 millions native french speakers. One number is ridiculously high, the other ridiculously low. The sources vary as too how many people exactly speak french as a mothertongue, due to the complexity of having exact numbers from reliable sources in the whole world. I guess the most reasonable estimations vary between 220 millions (german source) and 265 millions (italian source). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.14.227.246 (talk) 01:21, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

2014 : 274 millions know French including 212 millions using it a daily : http://www.francophonie.org/IMG/pdf/oif_synthese_anglais_001-024.pdf--Loup Solitaire 81 (talk) 16:37, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

where is the Persian Langues

Persian Langues has 110 million people but is not in here! why? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Qian.neewan (talk • contribs) 08:47, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

KryssTal estimates

Is there any reason not to delete the KyrssTal estimates? They're self-published without any sources, and neither of the website's proprietors (Kryss Katsiavriades and Talaat Qureshi) seems to be any sort of linguistic or demographic scholar. —Neil 22:29, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Since no one has objected, I'm going to remove them. —Neil 06:36, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

@Malik.223: Thanks for your edits to this article! Unfortunately, I have to remove the KryssTal estimates. As I described above, they don't seem to meet Wikipedia's standards for a reliable source. If you have more details about where they come from, let's discuss them here.—Neil P. Quinn (talk) 03:53, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

Statista

I disagree with kwami edits to remove Statista. The Ethnologue website is also eCommerce website https://www.ethnologue.com/cart selling language articles and maps. PradeepBoston (talk) 21:06, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

Ethnologue is a linguistic reference. Statista is not. Per WP guidelines, Ethn. is a RS, and AFAICT Statista is not. — kwami (talk) 21:13, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

I do not agree with your AFAICT. Statista is Statistical reference used by Wall Street Journal and other news sites. "Statista is a reliable and comprehensive source for The Wall Street Journal - Jason Bellini, Editor, The Wall Street Journal" PradeepBoston (talk) 22:36, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

But the Wall Street Journal would not be accepted as a RS on WP. — kwami (talk) 07:00, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Restored Statista w tag. Updated Ethnologue section; there was a lot of fraud there, so it appears no-one is policing this article. That alone make it of dubious value. — kwami (talk) 20:05, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. More data is better as everyone has POV. It is hard to define language boundaries. PradeepBoston (talk) 20:09, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Proposed merge with List of languages by number of native speakers

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

There's a fairly clear consensus to merge.—Neil P. Quinn (talk) 04:02, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

Both these pages cover very similar ground. On the total speakers page, both the Ethnologue and Weber estimates separate out native, second language, and total speakers, and using sortable tables means that the list can work for all three.

The native speakers page only includes one estimate, from Nationalencyklopedin. Adding it to the total speakers page, and then renaming that page "list of languages by number of speakers" would consolidate everything nicely. —Neil P. Quinn (talk) 06:33, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

To me, these seem like two completely different things. If the pages are merged, it would be impossible to get a list by number of native/total speakers, because the lists are not presented in a single table, but broken down by subsections, so they can't be sorted with sortable tables. Nikola (talk) 07:10, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

Nikola, I'm afraid I don't entirely understand you. Right now this page has a sortable list of languages according to Ethnologue, and the other one has a different sortable list according to Nationalencyklopedin. What I'm proposing is that we just add the Nationalencyklopedin list to this page as a new section. So this page would have three separate, sortable lists instead of two. I'm not proposing to change anything else, so everything that is possible now will still be possible with the pages merged.——Neil P. Quinn (talk) 05:38, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

• Undecided. Might be worthwhile to move both into list of languages by number of speakers, with §1 on native and §2 on total. But if we're going to follow RS's, the entire §2 would be deleted. We have three sources: Statista is not a RS. We decided on the other article that Ethnologue is too error-prone to use. And Weber (1997), if it is a RS (and I don't know that it is) is basically worthless. — kwami (talk) 17:15, 29 August 2015 (UTC)
  • kwami, I think we pretty much agree. What I really want is to combine the lists into list of languages by number of speakers; I listed it as a merge because I don't know a good way to list a combination merge-rename. My main motivation is to reduce overlap (because there's so little reliable information that there's no need for two articles—for example, Ethnologue doesn't actually rank by total speakers), make it easier to prevent POV pushing (because there would be just one page to watch), and centralize discussion (for example, both pages used Ethnologue but the discussion you participated only removed it from one). I read the discussion about Ethnologue and it's thought-provoking, although I'm still undecided. A merge will help up get issues like that decided once and for all.——Neil P. Quinn (talk) 21:07, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Updated Ethnologue. You can see the figures and definitions are all over the place, which IMO is a good thing. It shows this is not a simple question to answer.

I would merge into the other article, as it has the most discussion and page history. Then the article could be renamed. (That's easy.) This article should be retained as a rd w page history. — kwami (talk) 21:17, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

I see many redirects like 'The Most spoken languages of the world' are going to Nationalencyklopedin page. I agree with User:Kwamikagami to merge the page and have single source of information. — Preceding unsigned comment added by PradeepBoston (talk • contribs) 17:52, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

kwami, PradeepBoston: Merging in the other direction sounds great to me. Should I reverse the tags so we can solicit more input, or should we just go ahead and do it?—Neil P. Quinn (talk) 16:20, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Go ahead in no-one objects. I'd mark this article with {{R from merge}} so the edit history is apparent. — kwami (talk) 18:21, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

No issues. Please go ahead. PradeepBoston (talk) 19:01, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

• Don't merge. They are different and will be confusing when merged. Stranger195 (talk • contribs • guestbook) 04:01, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
• Merge The article name can simply be: List of languages by speakers. It would include native and total speakers.Filpro (talk) 15:25, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

• @SuperTah:: you reverted this merge when I implemented it. On this page, I count four people (including me) agreeing with the idea of merging the two pages together (but still keeping all the different lists separate) and then changing the name to list of languages by number of speakers. Two people opposed the idea, and it sounds like you did as well.

In your edit summary, you wrote: "we still need statistics on total number of speakers-discussion pertained merging native speaker article into this one, not the other way round". We can certainly still have statistics on total speakers in the new page (assuming we can find a reliable source), and since the four supporters here liked the idea of changing the name of the new page to "...by number of speakers", it doesn't really matter which way we merge. Does that address your objections, or do you still oppose the idea?—Neil P. Quinn (talk) 20:28, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

• Merge Very good idea. Twitteristhebest (talk) 03:01, 6 October 2015 (UTC)
• Merge I found it very confusing that the two articles are separate, and being able to view them against each other on a single page would be very convenient. As far as I know it wouldn't be a difficult merge either. Kaschimmel (talk) 19:42, 8 October 2015 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

unmerged

Per "talk:list of languages by number of native speakers#Merge completed" and "talk:list of languages by number of speakers#merge," the merge between this page and "list of languages by number of native speakers" did not work out and the pages have been unmerged again. Should the merge-discussion notification on this page be removed then? Nicole Sharp (talk) 21:46, 11 October 2015 (UTC)

compilation of sources

Just FYI, but I took the time to compile the data from "list of languages by number of native speakers," "list of languages by total number of speakers," and each individual language's Wikipedia page to create this list: "user:Nicole Sharp/languages by population." Since it combines multiple sources and multiple dates from across Wikipedia, not sure if it is proper to copy into the Wikipedia article here, but feel free to use it if you like. Nicole Sharp (talk) 21:27, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

Thai

The Thai numbers are way off. There are about 63 million people living in Thailand, and it is the only official language there, well over 90 % should speak it. Thai_Language lists 60 - 65 million speakers. The figure on this page seem to be from 1990... I bet other languages have the same problem. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.226.97.7 (talk) 21:29, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

One would be surprised to realize that there are many people in Thailand - Thai citizens and permanent residents - whose Central Thai is not very good (and in some cases, virtually nonexistent). First, there are four main languages in Thailand, which are mostly mutually unintelligible: Isan (actually, several dialects of Lao), Lanna (Kham Muang/Northern Thai), and Southern Thai (Dai), as well as the standard Central Thai. This is not to mention the Malay dialect spoken in the three southernmost provinces, nor the large number of "hill tribe" people, all with their own language, nor the diversity of people who live/work in Thailand having emigrated from Myanmar (e.g., Shan/Tai Yai, Karen, etc.) and Cambodia. Yes, Central Thai is the language in the schools, but a lot of people don't got to school much, and the older population have much less Central Thai proficiency. --Jeffmcneill (talk) 07:55, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

I also want to add that the Central Thai is indeed the only official Thai language. It, along with Central Thai culture, is used in Thaiification of Thailand (actual word used by Military dictators and right wing Thai politicians from the 1940s).

References

Fabricated

This article based on data from a Christian missionary website is a total nonsense.--Professional Assassin (talk) 21:36, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Why? they have a vested interest in knowing how to allocated their missionary resources. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.180.45.209 (talk) 23:43, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Because they have a vested interest in having both non-English speakers, as well as English speakers, for the purpose of missionary work. The real problem isn't that they are missionary, but rather that the data is no good, apples to oranges, many different sources, and mindbogglingly incorrect in some obvious areas. Not to mention the definition of "Native" and "Non-Native" speakers, and the very term "spoken" language (vs. written) is ridiculous. Mandarin only works if one relies completely on the written script. But that makes it not a spoken language, or at least certainly not spoken by the numbers they have. --Jeffmcneill (talk) 08:06, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

Table sort is awkward

Why does the table is sorted by invisible values? Why was the Russian, with 166 proven speakers, ranked higher than Portuguese with 200M speakers? If no exact total values are known, sorting should be done by L1 column. Not by alleged total value. And this proven (not alleged) sum should be listed in "Total' column. That would be fair! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Suncatcher 13 (talk • contribs) 16:57, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

German L2 speakers in Germany: 2/3 of the country’s population?

The list says that there are 55 million L2 speakers of German in Germany, which amounts to 2/3 of the country’s total population. However I am sure that at least 90% of German speakers in Germany are L1 speakers, so this figure can’t be true. Milton Alan Turner of Saint Ignatius Highschool, Cleveland reports 9 million German L2 speakers altogether, which seems much more realistic. LiliCharlie (talk) 19:56, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

Malay (Bahasa Melayu) and Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia)

The list by native speakers says that over 140 million Indonesians speak Indonesian as a second language, in addition to the 20 million or so who speak it natively. Furthermore, the population of Indonesia itself is over 230 million (4th most populous nation in the world), and the official language of the nation is Indonesian.

I don't know if there are any sources regarding the actual number of Indonesian speakers in Indonesia, but i'm sure they would make the list. I only care because I happen to be one of those speakers of Indonesian as a second language (though I'm American).Chas (talk) 18:10, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Seconded. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian_language, there's ~165 million speakers total, with 41 million native speakers. I don't understand how that got ignored by this list... --True (talk) 20:51, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Linguistically speaking, Indonesian is a dialect; it's mutually intelligible with other dialects of Malay, such as Bahasa Malaysia. This is backed up by the wikipedia article "Malay Language."

Wikipedia contradicts itself when the Malay article claims 180mil total speakers based on ethnologue without listing it up there with Bengali in this list. This point remains if you disregard Malay and consider just the Wikipedia 'Indonesian Language' article which cites ethnologue for 165 million. I'd edit it, but my changes always get reversed, I've given up.

Having had some exposure to both Malaysian and Indonesian, they are indeed very similar but only barely mutually intelligible. They are in the same sense that a German speaker listening very carefully to a Dutch speaker may be able to understand with a bit of work. It is, therefor, fallacious to list them as the same language. 67.168.203.190 (talk) 01:00, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

I support the frustration of other users... The population of Indonesia is in excess of 250 million and for the past 50 years Bahasa Indonesia has been the sole language of education, government and media across the country, with literacy rates well above 90% it is simply ludicrous to say that so few people speak Malayu/Indonesian as listed by ethnologue. On top of this Malayu/indonesian is the lingua franca of Borneo and malaysia and one of the primary languages of Singapore. Varients of malayu are spoken across southern Micronesia, Southern Thailand and Southern Philippines. 300 million total speakers would be a conservative estimate making it one of the top global languages. Somehow it appears this does not fit our global paradigm...

As for comments that Malay and Indonesian are not interchangable or far from similar, please explain that to the millions of Indonesian's who watch Malay movies and sitcoms every day and vice versa. On seperate occasions I have travelled through each countries with native speakers from the other country on their first trips to their neighbouring nation. At no stage did either have trouble communicating fluently carrying on detailed discussions in a language in a country they had never been to before. I myself though fluent in Indonesian as a second language find I can chat extensively with malaysians, understanding at least 85%-90% of all words and easily guessing the meaning through clear word association for most of the rest. Bigyabbie (talk) 08:24, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

Semi-protected

This article should be semi-protected as it has been vandalized everyday for a very longtime now. 70.51.84.138 (talk) 15:04, 26 July 2016 (UTC)

Not done: requests for increases to the page protection level should be made at Wikipedia:Requests for page protection. — JJMC89 (T·C) 16:14, 26 July 2016 (UTC)

Historical view into these data

Is there an article on Wikipedia that looks at the historical change of the sorts of data shown in this list?

Say 1800, 1900, 1950, 1970, 1980, and so forth?

It would be encyclopedic, and interesting to our global readership, if any data sources are available.

Cheers. N2e (talk) 17:53, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Hindi/Urdu mutually intelligible

I have seen this statement repeatedly on Wikipedia: "Urdu is mutually intelligible to Hindi." It appears on several pages, but I don't think any of them are cited. What basis do we have for this? Urdu and Hindi have differences, which cause them not to fit the definition of "mutual intelligibility." To what extent of similarity between two languages does there have to be before Wikipedia considers it mutually intelligible. I think we at least need a qualifier here to note the differences. Abierma3 (talk) 04:49, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

Just about every source covers this.

At the colloquial level they aren't just mutually intelligible, they're practically identical: Native speakers can't tell the difference. With educated jargon they become mutually unintelligible, but then there are specialized registers of English that outsiders can't understand either. — kwami (talk) 21:16, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

Ethnologue list Hindi and Urdu as separate language so because we are using Ethnologue as our only source for this article. So we have to list them as separate languages. 70.51.84.138 (talk) 03:47, 26 July 2016 (UTC)

Even ethnologue says both are co-dialects to each other. SriHarsha Bhogi (talk) 12:50, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

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German

How can there be 78 million first language speakers when there are already 83 million people in Germany, plus Austria, parts of Switzerland and Belgium? I know they speak strange dialects but still they're supposed to be German-speaking... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.174.247.217 (talk) 00:35, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

well not everyone in Germany/Austria/South Tyrol/Liechtenstein/German speaking parts of Switzerland and Belgium/...

speaks German as first language (but I agree that 78 mil. seems a little bit low) 14:05, 20 July 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.192.144.20 (talk)

About 90% is the 82 million people in Germany speak German as their first language https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/180022/umfrage/deutsch-als-muttersprache-in-der-familie/

That would be 73.8 million. I guess the numbers are similar for the 9 million people in Austria. MartinThoma (talk) 20:44, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

Maltese

Why is this included under Arabic as a 'variant'? It is an independent language. This classification is ignorant at best, though probably illegal. Wikipedia, wake up and hire some decent linguists. Relying on crappy professors and students with too much time on their hands has done you no favours. 193.188.33.23 (talk) 14:29, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

How is it illegal? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.243.253.117 (talk) 10:28, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Linguistically, Maltese is a dialect of Arabic, descended from the otherwise extinct Sicilian Arabic dialect. So, if all dialects(some not mutually intellegible) of Arabic (not just the standard form) are supposed to be included, you might include Maltese. Maltese does use a different script than Standard Arabic, but , after all, Hindi and Urdu are counted as one single language, even though Hindi uses Devanagari script while Urdu uses Arabic script. Quanstizium (talk) 21:37, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

English speakers way off

According to The Telegraph article, Mapped: Where to go if you can't be bothered to learn the language, I've calculated the number of English speakers at far more than 1,387,530,865. How is this "Ethnologue's" figure so far off this mark?

Nation	Population	English Speaking %	Total English Speakers
United States	324,459,463	96%	310,864,612
India	1,339,180,127	12%	162,040,795
Nigeria	190,886,311	53%	101,818,758
Philippines	104,918,090	93%	97,133,168
Pakistan	197,015,955	49%	96,537,818
United Kingdom	66,181,585	98%	64,685,881
Germany	82,114,224	70%	57,479,957
Egypt	97,553,151	35%	34,143,603
Canada	36,624,199	86%	31,361,302
Bangladesh	164,669,751	18%	29,640,555
Italy	59,359,900	40%	23,743,960
Australia	24,450,561	97%	23,717,044
France	64,979,548	36%	23,392,637
Malaysia	31,624,264	63%	19,787,302
Ghana	28,833,629	67%	19,223,380
Thailand	69,037,513	27%	18,750,589
South Africa	56,717,156	31%	17,582,318
Mexico	129,163,276	13%	16,662,063
Netherlands	17,035,938	90%	15,332,344
Poland	38,170,712	37%	14,123,163
China	1,409,517,397	1%	14,095,174
Turkey	80,745,020	17%	13,726,653
Nepal	29,304,998	46%	13,623,894
Iraq	38,274,618	35%	13,396,116
Brazil	209,288,278	5%	10,464,414
Spain[d]	46,354,321	22%	10,197,951
Sri Lanka	20,876,917	48%	9,979,166
Kenya	49,699,862	19%	9,358,484
Cameroon	24,053,727	38%	9,140,416
Sweden	9,910,701	90%	8,919,631
Russia	143,989,754	5%	7,890,639
Israel	8,321,570	85%	7,070,838
Zimbabwe	16,529,904	42%	6,873,134
Belgium	11,429,336	60%	6,857,602
Austria	8,735,453	73%	6,376,881
Sierra Leone	7,557,212	0.8353	6,312,539
Romania	19,679,306	0.31	6,100,585
Greece	11,159,773	51%	5,691,484
Tanzania[c]	57,310,019	10%	5,667,961
Denmark	5,733,551	0.91	5,217,531
Switzerland	8,476,005	61%	5,194,096
Morocco	35,739,580	14%	5,003,541
Norway[l]	5,305,383	90%	4,774,845
Ireland	4,761,657	98%	4,684,042
New Zealand	4,705,818	0.9782	4,603,231
Madagascar	25,570,895	18%	4,602,761
Singapore	5,708,844	80%	4,567,075
Jordan	9,702,353	0.45	4,366,059
Papua New Guinea	8,251,162	50%	4,105,778
Liberia	4,731,906	0.8267	3,911,867
Finland[k]	5,523,231	70%	3,866,262
Uganda	42,862,958	8%	3,467,613
Hong Kong	7,364,883	0.4607	3,393,002
Algeria	41,318,142	7%	2,892,270
Argentina	44,271,041	7%	2,886,472
Czech Republic	10,618,303	0.27	2,866,942
Jamaica	2,890,299	0.9764	2,822,088
Portugal	10,329,506	27%	2,788,967
Yemen	28,250,420	9%	2,542,538
Colombia	49,065,615	4%	2,070,569
Hungary	9,721,559	0.2	1,944,312
Chile	18,054,726	0.0953	1,720,615
Slovakia	5,447,662	26%	1,416,392
Lithuania	2,890,297	0.38	1,098,313
Latvia	1,949,670	0.46	896,848
Botswana	2,291,661	0.3842	880,456

Striker161 (talk) 22:52:15 Saturday, 10 February 2018 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Striker161 (talk • contribs)

Ethnologue only counts first (L1) and second language (L2) speakers, not speakers of English as a foreign language. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 00:45, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

A quick calculation suggests those numbers add up to between 1.4 billion and 1.5 billion, which isn't particularly far off from the estimate given in the article. Speed74 (talk) 13:32, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

Tagalog/Filipino

Should Tagalog be added to the list. It has over 70 million speakers.2605:6001:EB50:A900:A97C:D188:DD51:706B (talk) 01:39, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

I also believe Tagalog/Filipino should be on the list. The National Statistics Office (now Philippine Statistics Authority) reports that over 80% of the population of the Philippines can speak its national language. With a population growing to a hundred million now, that makes over 80 million speakers already. This does not include the large Filipino populations in California, Hawaii, the Middle East, Italy, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Can somebody clarify the basis of not including this language? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 112.201.129.73 (talk) 06:18, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

Ethnologue links

Why were they removed? Hegsareta (talk) 06:50, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

It seems they were removed without an appropriate edit summary by User:Azerty82 in early September (2nd or 1st, depending on your local time). Had I noticed the removal I would certainly have reverted it. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 18:59, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

Hindi

Hindi has 534 million speakers as L1 and L2 (273 million as L2). www.ethnologue.com/language/hin

When Ethnologue writes about Hindi, It's already considering Urdu as a dialect. It's possible to read it in "Dialects".

On the other hand, It's not correct to add 163 million Urdu speakers to 534 million Hindi speakers, because almost all people who can speak Urdu, are also speakers of Hindi as L2. There is a double counting. www.ethnologue.com/language/urd

So, inside the 273 million Hindi speakers as L2 are already the 163 million Urdu speakers.

--Migang2g (talk) 02:16, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

---

Arabic

How can it have 0 native speakers and be 5th in rank? Vandalism? 98.143.70.197 (talk) 14:00, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

Not to mention that the Hindu-Urdu controversy appears to have spilled over into Wikipedia. They are listed separately but for the purposes of ranking get to include each other's numbers. 98.143.70.197 (talk) 21:53, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

Persian

The numbers for Persian are totally wrong. There are much more than 52 million speakers. Everyone in Iran can speak Persian. Iran alone has 80 million inhabitants (be it as mother tongue or L2). Then 1/3 of Afghanistan speak Persian as a mother tongue, it's also the main language (lingua franca) there. Everyone in Tajikistan speaks Persian. Main cities in Uzbekistan are Persian speaking. And there are about 5 million Iranians abroad. The wiki article about Persian itself says that there are 110 million Speakers (out of them 70 million as mother tongue). Here even the L2 are totally missing and the L1 only points out the numbers of native speakers in Iran.

1. The numbers given here are those for the language with ISO 639-3 code pes, not for the language group "Persian" that includes Tajik, Dari, and other varieties, which are classified as separate languages.

2. To cite another source: According to the CIA World Factbook 53% of people in Iran speak Persian, see Languages of Iran#CIA World Factbook. Also, a sentence of the form "Everyone in ... can speak ..." is never correct, as babies and people with certain handicaps, such as the deaf, don't master any spoken language. There is no room for such crude pre-scientific statements in an encyclopedia. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 09:53, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

Hindi (incl. Urdu as a variety in India)

@LiliCharlie: Please see the Dialects section in this link: https://www.ethnologue.com/language/hin

Where it says, "Khari Boli (Dehlavi, Kauravi, Khadi Boli, Khari, Khariboli, Vernacular Hindustani). Formal vocabulary borrowed from Sanskrit, de-Persianized, de-Arabicized. Literary Hindi, or Hindi-Urdu, has 4 varieties: Hindi (High Hindi, Nagari Hindi, Literary Hindi, standard Hindi); Urdu [urd]; Dakhini; Rekhta. Hindustani, though not listed separately in India, refers here to the unofficial lingua franca of northwest India. Has a lexical mixture in varying proportions of Hindi (vocabulary derived from Sanskrit) and Urdu (vocabulary derived from Persian or Arabic)."

So clearly Urdu is listed as a 4th variety of literary Hindi. 2607:9880:4038:B:51D3:E0A3:7839:252C (talk) 14:19, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

Please read carefully. "Literary Hindi" aka "Hindi-Urdu" is not the same as Hindi. In fact Hindi is also listed as a variety of Literary Hindi. Following your interpretation this means that Hindi is a dialect of itself, which is nonsense. Let's stick to the source instead of your most questionable interpretation of it. — For details on Ethnologue's language information see https://www.ethnologue.com/about/language-info which expressly informs readers that the Dialects section "[i]ncludes macrolanguage membership if applicable." Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 16:47, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

L2 numbers from other sources may be needed for certain languages

Western Punjabi, Korean, Javanese, Egyptian Arabic and Persian lack L2 numbers. The Ethnologue listing for Japanese says that it has only 121.5k L2 speakers. That seems to be too low to be close to the actual number (outside Japan, 132,317 people were certified for a JLPT level in the second test for 2018 alone), but I can't find another estimate. Hegsareta (talk) 18:36, 1 June 2019 (UTC)

Though it might be true that Japanese has a lot more proficient foreign language speakers than second language speakers, 121.5k still seems extremely low. — A bit over three years ago Christophe Hendrickx posted on my talk page because he couldn't believe the then-number of 11,500 L2 speakers either and thought it should be corrected to 11,500,000. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 19:21, 1 June 2019 (UTC)

Italian

The ethnologue number of L2 speakers of Italian must be as there are 1 million people of Italian descent in Canada and everyone that I know can speak some Italian. So Ethnologue says that only 3 million L2 speakers exist. What about the 15 Italian descendents in Brazil. What about the 10 million Italian descendents in the US. What about North Africa, the balkans, Greece, South America. Total nonsense. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.31.156.61 (talk) 05:04, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

All we can do is reproduce the source here; we cannot alter it. If you want Ethnologue to change their entry for Italian send an email to feedback@ethnologue.com but note that in Ethnologue's classification of Romance languages Italian is just one of at least 16 closely related languages of Italy, so what you perceive as speakers of Italian might be counted as speakers of other languages. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 10:01, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

Are there other reliable sources?

This article is based entirely on the Ethnologue data, which, as has been pointed out repeatedly above (and I agree) often seem to be too low. I wonder if it would be possible to get reliable estimates from a second, independent source. Does anyone know of such a source that could potentially be used? --Krissie (talk) 15:31, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

Pashto has more speakers

Pashto has more speakers than many of the 34 languages you have mentioned. 35 million in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, approximately 4 million in Sindh province mainly in its Karachi city, 0.5 million in Punjab province, above 5 million in Balochistan province, about 36 million in Afghanistan, and 7 million Pashtun diaspora in various countries of the world. It means that the total speakers of Pashtun language are nearly 90 million. Therefore, Pashto might be ranked at No. 8 in your list. Haaim (talk) 11:56, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Ethnologue data availability changes

Since October 25th, 2019, Ethnologue requires a $480/year or $199/month subscription to see the number of speakers of any language. I won't be able to add data from the 23rd edition (2020) when it's available (or even see if it's available). Hegsareta (talk) 13:43, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

@Hegsareta: That's right. However you can still get the total number of speakers in full millions on their What are the top 200 most spoken languages? page. There is a search field right above the top 20 list for languages that are not among those. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 20:10, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

Sorry Pashto might be ranked at No. 18 Haaim (talk) 12:06, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Pashto has more speakers than many languages in your list

Pashto might be ranked at No. 18 in your list. It has about 36 million speakers in Afghanistan 35 million in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Pakistan 4 million in Sindh province mainly in Karachi city Pakistan 5 million in Balochistan Pakistan 0.5 million in Punjab 7 million Pashtun diaspora in various countries of the world Total speakers of Pashto are about 90 million. Please update your list with the correct information. Haaim (talk) 12:01, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Why did you make the same point twice? Anyway, we don't "make" these figures here, we can only report figures listed in reliable sources elsewhere. Currently, sadly, the page has only one source: the top-200 list from the Ethnologue website. If you enter "Pashto" in the search box on that page, you'll see three languages: Northern Pashto, Southern Pashto, Central Pashto, with 39 million speakers altogether. Even if counted together, that's not quite sufficient for the top-34 list, though it comes close.

Don't ask me why they consider the three "languages" as distinct – like I said, we cannot change that here, you would have to discuss it with the Ethnologue people. Also, while I readily accept that the figures for the Pashto varieties are too low, that seems to be true of many or all other languages on the list too. See the various discussions above. So, while the absolute figures given for each language may well be too low, the relative positions of languages in the list are likely still quite reliable.

Certainly it would be good to have additional sources that complement the Ethnologue's statistics. I asked above whether there are other reliable sources publishing language statistics – sadly it seem there are none. --Krissie (talk) 20:29, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

I agree with Krissie on virtually everything, but want to explain one point. There are no sources publishing reliable language statistics on total numbers of speakers. Ethnologue's "statistics" for this are mere guesses. My personal preference would be for this article to be deleted, as it will not be even close to accurate. However, as long we keep it, we will prefer sources over the truth. As Ethnologue, while poor, is the least bad source, we have little option but to continue using it. We will not change the figures for an individual language, any language, based on some other source as that would descend into WP:OR very fast with users cherry-picking the source that best suits their purpose. This has been discussed previously. Jeppiz (talk) 21:04, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

Add more languages

Kindly add some more languages so that the languages with population 20 million may be shown here.182.186.66.91 (talk) 13:13, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

Portuguese

Well, there are 200 million people in Brazil, and I don't know the numbers of the other countries which talk portuguese, but there are six others. So, how can '178 millions' be right? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 186.250.48.194 (talk) 00:09, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

It's not right, of course (178 million). Brazil has 190.755.799 people, ~99.8% pt-N ^(source), plus Portugal (about 10.5 million), Angola (about 18.5 million), Mozambique, Cape Verde, Guiné-Bissau, Macau, East Timor... Seems to be a mathematic problem. :D Leandromartinez (talk) 02:20, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

• • I also noticed this. The wiki page for Brazil says the population is at 200 million. Has to be at least 230 million native speakers now** — Preceding unsigned comment added by 163.47.107.5 (talk) 01:34, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

• • • Brazil already has 204M of population and 99% of them speaks Portuguese. How it could be only 200M in the table? I corrected the value according to Ethnologue. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Suncatcher 13 (talk • contribs) 16:37, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

The countries that speak Portuguese as a native language are: Brazil, Portugal, Angola, Moçambique, Guiné Bissau, São Tomé e Príncipe, Cabo Verde, Timor Leste, and Guiné Equatorial. Google says the population of Brazil is currently 209M, Angola and are at 29M each, and Portugal at 10M, never mind the smaller countries. Something's definitely wrong with the statistic for Portuguese... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 177.75.0.210 (talk) 12:21, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

Doesn't match the count present in the link I attached as reference. The total number of Portuguese speakers it's clearly much higher than the number presented in this article. (At least 282 million) 185.246.30.152 (talk) 13:40, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

References

Listing of Arabic on the list

I have heard that the L2 value for Arabic is spurious. I haven't personally checked that, but assuming it is true, I believe that Arabic (not just Egyptian Arabic) should be added back to the list in place of Egyptian Arabic (somebody took off Arabic due to the false claim that "Arabic as a whole is not considered a single language", which contradicts both general scholarly consensus and other articles on Wikipedia (which views Arabic as a single language with both a (literary) standard and several regional varieties/dialects; I think this is similar to the case of the standard varieties of Serbo-Croatian). Just like with the other languages with "spurious" L2 values, we can just list it as such (or we just leave the numbers just as ethologue did. with a note that the number is spurious; this can be applied to all "spurious" numbers.).

Sawtguren (talk) 06:30, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

We're reporting a specific source. According to that source, Arabic is not a language. If you have a different source that lists Arabic as a language, we can add a section for that.

Ethnologue has fixed the problem w L2 speakers, so we can put it back in. — kwami (talk) 07:51, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

I have added "by Ethnologue" to the end of the sentence since as it was, it is just not factual as per both other Wikipedia articles and general scholarly consensus who, as I already said before, view Arabic as a single language with both a (literary) standard and several regional varieties/dialects. But since you feel that we cannot remove the sentence since Ethnologue is the source, I think that adding to the end "by Ethnologue" is a perfectly reasonable compromise, yes? I just don't want to see "Arabic as a whole is not considered a single language" (a blanket statement which acts like this is the objective fact OR acts like this is the general consensus) when literally every other Wikipedia article and general scholarly consensus (as linked on relevant articles all over Wikipedia) say that Arabic is in fact a single language (just with several varieties), as this is contradictory. If you have an issue with that addition, please elaborate. Sawtguren (talk) 15:04, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

Sure, that's fine. I thought it was obvious we were talking about Ethnologue. — kwami (talk) 18:28, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

Arabic is considered a single language for political and religious reasons but not for linguistic reasons. The wider idea of "arabic" is then broken in to three, one is classical Arabic of the koran, second MSA is something of a literary language, then there are the various arabics that are actually spoken. These differ dramatically in terms of grammar, syntax, vocabulary, pronunciation, even the alphabet can vary. There's an idea that if two languages can be somewhat mutually intelligible than somehow they're the same language, this of course is false. I'm fluent in Spanish because of this I can read Portuguese and understand spoken Brazilian Portuguese, however of course Portuguese and Spanish are different languages. A rough equivalent would be saying that romance languages are all Latin, using Classical Latin in Church, then making medieval Occitan the literary language and continuing to speak regular romance languages as before. 179.12.158.42 (talk) 01:57, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

Chinese

Article states that so-called "[m]acro languages" like Arabic, Chinese, et al, are a difficult to define, and therefore are subject to error "of the order of 25%". The sentiment relating to the uncertainty of classification is more or less correct, but Chinese is not a macro language, at least not as conceived here. In fact, it is a family of languages whose various branches can differ as wildly as the Germanic languages do from one another (take, say, English, Portuguese, and German). To say otherwise does a disservice to the truth of the situation -- some of these languages have probably been distinct from one another for millennia. It IS a common error, though, because almost all of the Chinese languages use most of the same written characters. --DrHennessy (talk) 21:23, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

This page is at best highly misleading. We should not be talking about Mandarin and Cantonese as if they were the same language, because verbally they are very distinct. Khin2718 (talk) 16:39, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Portuguese is Germanic?

No, portuguese isnt germanic, but they are both Indo-European 71.34.16.148 (talk) 19:33, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

Persian speaker total

Moved from User talk:LiliCharlie § Persian speaker total

Hello there, I think u’ve made a mistake about total number of speakers. The page has ignored people with Persian language as their second language and it’s kinda disrespectful to ignore those people. Total number of Persian speaking ppl is around 110 million and u can find the references under my edition of the page. So please go read the references before rewinding the page to the 55 million version. With considering Persian speakers population only as 55 million, you are ignoring Iranian kurds, Iranian Turkmens, Iranian Arabs, Iranian Baluchs, Iranian Azeris, Iranian Armenians, Iranian Georgians, Iranian Lurs, Iranian Bakhtiaris etc. all of these ethnicities speak Persian as their second language which is not considered by Wikipedia which may bring rage and hate against wikipedia. There are also other people in Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Iraq, Bahrain etc. who speak Persian as their second language. We don’t care if the unified source is complete or not. We just care about being considered in the numbers. So please respect us and consider us as people with their second language as Persian.

From a Bakhtiari minatory in Iran. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.115.18.69 (talk • contribs) 22:59, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

The list is sourced to Ethnologue, and all we do is to cite them. If you think the number of total speakers for the language with the ISO 639-3 code pes (Iranian Persian, following their classification of Persian languages) is inaccurate you can send an email to feedback@ethnologue.com and ask them to correct that. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 00:24, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

Update Ethnologue (2021, 24th edition)

Ethnologue has just released its 24th edition. However, they haven't updated yet the top 200 page. Does anyone have an account on Ethnologue to update the list? A455bcd9 (talk) 17:02, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

I've just got an answer from Ethnologue: "Hello, they will be updated in the next 2 weeks or so." A455bcd9 (talk) 17:13, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

2021 edition now available: https://www.ethnologue.com/guides/ethnologue200 A455bcd9 (talk) 17:50, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

The list is false

Iran has a total population of 82 million people of all can speak Persian as their first or second language plus the population of Afghanistan 38 million and Tajikistan 9 million which all can speak "Iranian Persian" as their second language, the number of total speakers can't be only 74 million! 81.213.249.129 (talk) 22:36, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

Afghans and Tajiks don't speak Iranian Persian but their own dialects of Persian. Ethnologue lists them separately the same way they list Egyptian Arabic and Syrian Arabic separately. --Qahramani44 (talk) 23:53, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

Bad and Flawed Data

Some recent changes seem to have corrupted a lot of data. Implausible figures, wrong sums and doubtful to high and to low data. Who could check, I don't have access to appropriate data bases, thanks Ulrich Nillurcheier (talk) 08:36, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

While you're at it, please correct language family and grouping information, ie. Polish is labeled as Balto-Slavic but Russian as Slavic, (when both are Slavic and members of BS group). I'm sure there are more of this mistakes there.78.10.206.229 (talk) 17:25, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

This article is way off base.

It claims the number of native English speakers is 300 million. However, the US population exceeds that, and then there is Canada, Great Britain, and what about India? One of its official languages is English, for crying out loud.

I just now got my account in order to register this complaint. I guess a more constructive thing to do would be to set the record straight. Maybe I will spend a little time this weekend on it. I just don't understand why somebody would bother to post clearly inaccurate figures ... —Preceding unsigned comment added by Eugenepete (talk • contribs) 02:53, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Please by sure to add a Reliable source with that. I don't mean find the populations of countries from sources that speak a specific language and add them up to come up with a figure. Elockid ^(Talk) 04:00, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but a lot of people in the USA aren't English native speakers. Whether you like it or not, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the USA have substantial immigrant populations with the USA having by far the most immigrants in the world at 50.6 million according to worldpopulationreview.com with Saudi Arabia at third place with 13.5 million and Germany at second place with 15.8 million (too lazy to swap places). Most of those immigrants don't speak English with Spanish being the second most common language in the USA by native speakers due to Mexico being the largest source of US immigrants. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.6.253.145 (talk) 01:20, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

Ethnologue Chinese

I don't understand why there is a separate row in the table for "total Chinese", surely this could be handled with an asterisk if the desire is to indicate that the Chinese speak multiple languages. This is a table of languages, and the row above clearly states "Mandarin" not "Chinese". Comparitvely countries with multiple languages like Switzerland, Canada, and the United States of America do not contain similar distinctions. 1durphul (talk) 03:59, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

This can actually reflects the understanding that many people think of the Chinese languages as dialects of a single language, as is the doctrine of the Chinese language so the total Chinese is simply adding up all the speakers of the Chinese languages. 99.6.253.145 (talk) 10:32, 11 July 2022 (UTC)

Rounding issues

I assume that rounding should be eliminated, as it affects data accuracy. How alleged 166M of speakers of Russian could turn into 170M? How 203M speakers of Portueguese could turn into 200M? 4 millions of people matter!!! The rounding should be disabled, in my view. What are your opininon? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Suncatcher 13 (talk • contribs) 16:50, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Russian L1 240 and L2 92, why is overall 204?

240 (L1) plus 92 (L2), it must be 332 million in total (which gets it in the 6th place - between Hindi and French). Perhaps this record of the table should be corrected. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.114.30.30 (talk • contribs) 07:40, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

Swahili

Maybe that the number of mother tounge speakers are not that high, since many of the rural swahili speakers have a local tribal language which they learn to speak before they learn swahili, but, close to everybody in both Kenya, Tanzania and a huge number of Rwandans, Burundis, Ugandans and eastern DRC, speak swahili, they will easily pass 100 million, so it's more than strange, they are not on the list. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.227.81.60 (talk) 21:05, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

As usual people on the ground are ignored but European or American are the ones who feel entitled to edit and omit when we know the truth that there could be more than 150m speakers Nlivataye (talk) 11:25, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

And in Tanzania itself I currently know no one in the younger generation who doesn't speak Swahili as their first language and this in a country of 64 million people where 70% are below the age of 30 Nlivataye (talk) 11:26, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

Turkish

Number of Turkish speakers should be in this list as well. Turkey's population is over 70 million just by itself. When you add Turks who live abroad (Germany, Belgium, Netherlands) and people who can speak Turkish (in the way it is spoken in Turkey) in some Turkic countries such as Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, Syria, Iraq, Iran then the number is easily over 100m. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.233.61.25 (talk) 08:59, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

I think it was on the list in some previous version. Who deleted it? Quanstizium (talk) 21:28, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

Entitled people who think they know all facts and don't even live in Turkey Nlivataye (talk) 11:28, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

Swahili

Please listen to actual Swahili speakers in the region and many sources online. Tanzania is home to 64 million people and while there are hundreds of tribes and different other languages most now speak Swahili as their first language so Tanzania alone is enough to remove that bogus 16 million number for native speakers. Then there is Kenya another big second largest Swahili speaking country of 55 million which also have several tribes and languages but also largely speaks Swahili as their first language and the same for Eastern DRC which is almost half the country of 100 million and not to mention Other millions in Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and substantial numbers in Zambia, Mozambique, Somalia, Comoros and Oman. So Native speakers should be at least around 50 million while second around 50 to 70 million and overall almost 200 million Nlivataye (talk) 11:32, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

Logical impossibility

The Highest Estimation For Indonesian/Malay is lower than the Mode Average Estimation for just Indonesian. I know these lists are difficult - I'm just flagging it. --Chriswaterguy talk 14:25, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Ethnologue's estimates appear to be complete specious and impossible, as well. They claim 335 million English speakers as a first language. There are 316 million people in the USA, 63 million people in the UK, 35 million in Canada (28 million English speakers), 23 million in Australia, and another 9 million in Ireland and New Zealand (together). You see where this is going, right? Even if only 80% of those English-language speaking countries' populations actually speak English as a first language, it's still at least 350 million English speakers. My bet is the percentage is closer to 90% of the roughly 440 million residents of those countries (ignoring English as a first language speakers in the rest of world), or 395+ million. Ethnologue's estimate is thus off by a wide margin, especially on a so easily double-checked figure. 75.168.11.118 (talk) 01:54, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

English was perhaps the most closely accurate portrayed language. Try Swahili which they claim native speakers are 16 million and overall 74m when native speakers are around 60 million and overall 200 million Nlivataye (talk) 11:35, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

Arabic

0 for Arabic? Are you guys serious? Hundreds of millions speak Arabic as their first language Nlivataye (talk) 11:27, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

Hi @Nlivataye,

First of all, it's not "you guys", but Ethnologue that is used as a source. If you think they're wrong, please send them an email, they usually answer quite quickly and they're keen to fix any mistakes.

Then, according to Ethnologue, there are no native speakers of MSA/fusHa/standard Arabic. But there are native speakers of Egyptian Arabic, Sudanese Arabic, Moroccan Arabic, etc. It's just that no one speaks MSA natively. (in general, MSA is mostly written/read and not spoken) People have to learn MSA at school, at the mosque, etc. Every single source I found agrees with this statement. Do you have a reliable source providing the number of native fusHa speakers? A455bcd9 (talk) 11:33, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

And you don't think that's bogus given English isn't classified as British English, American English, Australian English, Nigerian or Indian English? Nlivataye (talk) 11:37, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

According to research, British English and American English (for instance) are mutually intelligible, whereas Iraqi Arabic and Moroccan Arabic (for instance) are not. And Palestinian Arabic and MSA have less than 50% of words in common and are not mutually intelligible (see al-Sharkawi, Muhammad (2016). History and Development of the Arabic Language, Qwaider, Chatrine; Abu Kwaik, Kathrein. Resources and Applications for Dialectal Arabic: the Case of Levantine, Saiegh-Haddad, Elinor (2011). "Phonological processing in diglossic Arabic: The role of linguistic distance", Harrat, Salima; Meftouh, Karima; Abbas, Mourad; Jamoussi, Salma; Saad, Motaz; Smaili, Kamel (2015). "Cross-Dialectal Arabic Processing", El-Haj, Mahmoud; Rayson, Paul; Aboelezz, Mariam (2018). "Arabic Dialect Identification in the Context of Bivalency and Code-Switching"). But yes, some English varieties may be (or become) separate languages, for instance Nigerian Pidgin is considered a language ([pcm]), whereas Nigerian English is not.

Again, if you have valuable insights on this topic, please send them to Ethnologue, or post reliable sources here. A455bcd9 (talk) 14:39, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

Ukrainian

Ukrainian language article states there are 40 million native speakers and around 45 million total. This language should be in the list. I suspect there are parties who don't want this to be common knowledge. Anyway to add it back and prevent from removing? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rumoku (talk • contribs) 17:50, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

There are 33,230,530 Ukrainian speakers (L1+L2) according to Ethnologue. source. A455bcd9 (talk) 17:52, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for the reply. It must be a mistake. I would believe if 33 millions is for L1 speakers.

Back in 2001 during Census 67% of Ukrainian population named Ukrainian as a first language.

Translator without borders confirms my numbers: 33 086 611 L1 + 9 939 637 L2. Total 43 millions.

The population didn't change that drastically. And I can't imagine that ~10 million people would forget the language in 10 years. Rumoku (talk) 20:10, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

If you think there's a mistake, please contact Ethnologue and ask them to fix the issue. Once fixed on Ethnologue, it'll be updated on Wikipedia. A455bcd9 (talk) 21:36, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

Putting it all into perspective

There is a serious problem with the all the data listed here in this arcticle due to two reasons: First: Survey years are not given. Second: Number of speakers should be put into perspective by also showing how large percentage did speakers of any particular language form in the year when the survey was taken, something like: 1. English 1,400 - 1,800 million; 23% - 30% of worlds population in 1997 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.131.29.94 (talk) 05:00, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Discussion

I'd like to know if I'm counted in as an engrish speaker? Does my Maghrebi arabic include french? 88.195.46.112 (talk) 04:52, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't understand the reason to state that figures for French include the Maghreb Area... It is right to say that the figure include French Creole because it is a variant of French but... the data include French-speaker of the 3 french-speaking (and it is French, not a variant of the language as a creole is) Maghreb states and rightly so...it doesn't mean anything... Easyboy82 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.222.27.206 (talk) 21:58, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Where is Dutch? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.144.100.44 (talk) 16:48, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

German seems a little high at 229 million. The country of Germany only has about 82 million people, and Switzerland and Austria each have about 8 million. I'm not sure where the rest of the 130 million plus German speakers are supposed to come from. 70.176.120.225 (talk) 07:05, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Long time listener, first time caller: Given what appears to be many discrepancies listed below (especially, for example, Ukrainian) should Ethnologue be treated as a reliable source?NotYourLawyer (talk) 22:25, 24 December 2022 (UTC)

@NotYourLawyer, yes per Ethnologue#Reception,_reliability,_and_use. But it would be amazing to have another source though. a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 09:33, 25 December 2022 (UTC)

This is very racist

This is very racist why Arabic not adding like a language it has more than 400 millions native speakers and they can understand each other even though they have different dialect but still same language they understand each other from country to contry that's super weird tha statistics in this article not fair and not valid in reality 77.232.123.20 (talk) 22:05, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

Arabic is the 6th most spoken language according to the CIA ranking. According to Ethnologue, Modern Standard Arabic is 6th, Egyptian Arabic is 26th, Sudanese Arabic is 42nd and Algerian Arabic is 44th. a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 09:22, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

Numbering

There’s an error with the numbering. It shows the title as #1 instead of English. GamerKlim9716 (talk) 07:51, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

Can you please send a screenshot @GamerKlim9716? No issues on my computer (Chrome, MacOS). a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 08:25, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

I’m using the iOS app and it won’t let me add screenshots. GamerKlim9716 (talk) 08:50, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

better sources needed

Is there no better source available than paywall protected Ethnologue. Readers of this article are not able to view the remainder of the top 200 spoken languages. Paywall sources really shouldn't be used on wikipedia. Blario (talk) 22:44, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

Paywalled sources are used all the time on Wikipedia. a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 08:11, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

only Ethnologue? Just a question, no problem at all Manlleus (talk) 22:59, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

@Manlleus: I don't understand your question. a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 15:51, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

What other primary sources of the list are out there? Manlleus (talk) 17:58, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

@Manlleus The CIA and Ethnologue are secondary (or tertiary?) sources. I don't know other reliable sources. Please let me know if you know some. a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 21:54, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Most of the article (table) is based from Ethnologue. I'm not the one to provide a better, non-payable or more accesible source but we agree on the source issue Manlleus (talk) 22:44, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Being behind a paywall is not a big problem, far worse is how poor Ethnologue generally is (as a reminder, it is originally a Christian evangelical outreach and not an academic institution). However, it's often the only thing we have. If someone said no information is better than wrong information, I'd be willing to lend an ear and have this article deleted. It's not flat out wrong but it's not really reliable either. Jeppiz (talk) 23:12, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Hi @Jeppiz:

• "how poor Ethnologue generally is": do you have a reliable source backing this claim or is it just your personal opinion? Have a look at Ethnologue#Reception,_reliability,_and_use and you'll see that Ethnologue is considered "excellent" by linguists.
• "it is originally a Christian evangelical outreach and not an academic institution": The Christian Science Monitor and the University of Notre Dame are Christian institutions and yet they're reliable sources. Similarly, even though Ethnologue's publisher (SIL International, also the registration authority for the ISO 639-3 standard) is a Christian organization, Ethnologue itself is a reliable academic publication and it is not ideologically or theologically biased (source). That's all what matters.

a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 06:56, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

Also: "SIL's scholarly output is impressive. The SIL Bibliography lists over 13,000 entries of books, journal articles, book chapters, dissertations, and other academic papers (SIL International 2009a). In addition, SIL workers participate extensively in the scholar community. They have served on the LSA Executive Committee, the editorial board of Language, and the Language review committee. Two past presidents of the LSA were SIL workers. SIL workers have played key roles in founding or providing crucial support for several linguistics journals, including Mon-Khmer Studies, Journal of West African Languages, Philippine Journal of Linguistics, and Language and Linguistics in Melanesia. Several SIL workers serve or have served as tenured faculty at secular universities, and many more serve as adjunct professors in colleges and universities. SIL has cooperative agreements with several universities in the US and abroad provide faculty for linguistics programs in these institutions." (source) a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 07:39, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

"Standard German" is changed to "German Language", which cannot be verified (current reference link after paywall)

09:52, 12 March 2023‎ 94.109.1.221 talk‎  18,045 bytes −6‎  No edit summaryundo Tags: Mobile edit Mobile web edit

This edit changed "Standard German" to "German Language" and added about 50M speakers. The reference link provided (https://www.ethnologue.com/25/language/deu) is not accessible (behind paywall?). "German Language" cannot be found at https://www.ethnologue.com/insights/ethnologue200/, therefore does not represent the source of the section well; also it cannot be found through Ethnologue website's search function. Should this edit be reverted? Υφ22 (talk) 03:24, 20 March 2023 (UTC) --Υφ22 (talk) 03:25, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

Uzbek language

According to the Wikipedia article, 44 mln speakers (L1+L2) of the Uzbek language exist! Therefore, the Uzbek language should come in 40-41th place on this (first) list! 145.118.206.222 (talk) 09:30, 9 May 2023 (UTC)

Western Punjabi, Eastern Punjabi???

I have noticed aa critical flaw in this list related to Punjabi, which is subdivided into Eastern and Western Punjabi, which themselves are families of dialects and not a language. Instead there should be just one category "Punjabic", which actually is the language consisting of dialects or languages. If that is not possible the there should be Punjabi, Hindko, Saraiki, Pothohari, etc. PeoplesRepublicOfChina01 (talk) 11:02, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

Ethnologue 2023 update?

Could anyone who has access to their paywalled data update the list based on the Ethnologue 2023 figures? The List of languages by number of native speakers is already up-to-date, but not yet this article.

Also, I notice that their own top 200 list apparently hasn't been updated for 2023 yet, even though that edition has apparently been available for some time – a bit strange. Krissie (talk) 13:28, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

Hi @Krissie,

I contacted them recently to ask them to update the top 200 list and I'm still waiting to hear back from them. I'll update here as soon as they update their public list. a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 08:35, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

I see you have already updated the page. Thanks a lot! Krissie (talk) 08:26, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

Hi @A455bcd9, just wondering why the list cuts off at 45 million this time when it was at 40 million during previous updates. Thanks. - Moalli (talk) 01:03, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

Hi @Moalli:

1. I was lazy.

2. I don't know how much we can reproduce from Ethnologue's website that is behind paywall besides what is publicly available so I thought it was better to shorten the list.

3. We need to decide on an arbitrary cut off. Top N most spoken? Those with more than X speakers? I think the current list is good

4. After Yoruba the list is: Hakka, Burmese, Sudanese Arabic, Algerian Arabic, Polish, Lingala. But then I don't know. The source doesn't allow us to see the whole list so we need to guess to find which language is the 47th most spoken. That's another reason to limit the length of this list. a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 06:05, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

@A455bcd9, I believe we should keep it at the 40 million cutoff as used in prior years for an "even number", similar to the 50 million for the native list. If we're going by top # spoken, then 50 is a good even cutoff. - Moalli (talk) 06:34, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

French second language is over calculated

It looks like French second language was taking account for anyone knowing the "oui" word. 2806:103E:2A:6538:75A3:3A3B:88C5:9D42 (talk) 19:16, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Why separate Iranian Persian from Afghan and Tajiki Persian?

Iranian Persian, Afghani Persian, and Tajiki Persian should be counted as one language in the list (Persian). They are all mutually intelligible dialects of Persian, akin to British English and American English. Thewikixx (talk) 03:48, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

The source does so, so we have to do so. Also, Tajiki Persian uses a different alphabet so all sources consider it a different language for this reason (the same goes for Hindi and Urdu, Serbian and Croatian, and Southern and Northern Azeri). For Dari and Farsi, it's all about politics, unfortunately. a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 07:47, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

Korean and Javanese

In the table, Korean has a dash under additional speakers. Finding this unlikely, I went to the footnote, which led to an Ethnologue page where I could not find any indication that there were or were not people who speak Korean as a second language (and Korean was described as the language of South Korea, with no mention of North Korea). I assumed that the dash meant zero speakers since the total number of the speakers is the same as the number of native speakers; how-ever, Javanese has a dash in both the native-speaker and the additional-language speaker columns, although its total is in the millions. The Wikipedia page on native speakers of languages gives Korean as 81 million versus 82 total here, indicating some one million nonnative speakers (or rounding or source differences). (The Encyclopedia Britannica gives about 81,740,000 total speakers versus some 81,720,000 native speakers.) While https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_as_a_foreign_language does not give numbers of learners or nonnative speakers, it lists Korean as relatively high in ranking in some countries as well as stating that one teacher's organization has 1,200 members and that "there were 234 King Sejong Institutes in 82 countries" teaching Korean. See also the article about Korean being the fastest-growing additional language a few years back: https://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20210207000090. What is up with the dashes in general and Korean non-native speaker numbers? Kdammers (talk) 23:00, 28 July 2024 (UTC)

Hi,

Ethnologue 2024 gives: "Total users in all countries: 81,128,730 (as L1: 81,109,730; as L2: 19,000).". If you think the L2 number is incorrect, please contact them and/or join their contributor program.

Still, please note that Ethnologue hasn't updated their top 200 list yet. That's why this page uses the 2023 list instead of the 2024 edition. I've just emailed them to know when they'll update the top list. a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 09:28, 29 July 2024 (UTC)