major languages
major languages There are more than 5000 languages in the world, 845 of them in India alone. The tables below give the approximate numbers of native speakers (their ‘mother tongue’) and the populations of countries where the language has official status.
Language | Millions |
---|---|
Native speakers | |
Chinese | 1,070 |
Mandarin | 864 |
English | 443 |
352 | |
Spanish | 341 |
Russian | 293 |
Arabic | 197 |
Bengali | 184 |
Portuguese | 173 |
Malay-Indonesian | 142 |
Japanese | 125 |
French | 121 |
German | 118 |
Urdu | 92 |
Punjabi | 84 |
Korean | 71 |
Official populations | |
English | 1,420 |
Chinese | 1,070 |
Hindi | 800 |
Spanish | 290 |
Russian | 275 |
French | 220 |
Arabic | 190 |
Portuguese | 185 |
Bengali | 177 |
Malay | 165 |
Japanese | 140 |
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major languages