List of languages by number of native speakers

This is a list of languages by the number of native speakers. It shows which languages are spoken by the most people as their first language.

All such rankings should be used with care, because it is not easy to decide what counts as a separate language. Some languages have very similar varieties that people can understand, but are treated as separate because of national standards. Other languages have varieties that cannot all be understood, but are still considered one language. For example, Danish and Norwegian are often seen as separate, while German, Italian, and English include varieties that cannot all be understood by each other.

There are also challenges in counting how many people speak each language. Numbers can change over time because populations grow and languages change. In some places, there is no good information about how many people speak each language, or the information may be old. Sometimes, numbers are made larger for political reasons, or smaller groups may not be counted fully.

Top languages by population

Ethnologue (2026)

According to Ethnologue, some languages have more than 50 million people who speak them as their first language in 2026. This list does not include groups of languages that Ethnologue calls macrolanguages, such as Arabic, Lahnda, Persian, Malay, Pashto, and Chinese.

CIA World Factbook (2018 estimates)

According to the CIA World Factbook, these were the most-spoken first languages in 2018: