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This is a list of languages by total number of speakers. It is difficult to define what constitutes a language as opposed to a dialect . For example, Chinese and Arabic are sometimes considered single languages, but each includes several mutually unintelligible varieties , and so they are sometimes considered language families instead.
The following languages are listed as having at least 50 million first-language speakers in the 27th edition of Ethnologue published in 2024. [7] This section does not include entries that Ethnologue identifies as macrolanguages encompassing all their respective varieties, such as Arabic, Lahnda, Persian, Malay, Pashto, and Chinese.
Most UN councils use all six languages as official and working languages; however, as of 2023 the United Nations Secretariat uses only two working languages: English and French. [5] The six official languages spoken at the UN are the first or second language of 2.8 billion people on the planet, less than half of the world population. The six ...
Under the Charter, the official languages are Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish as well as Arabic which was added in 1973. Portuguese is the only unofficial language to have its day (May 5) proclaimed as "World Day". [5] See also: Official languages of the United Nations. Universal Postal Union (UPU) French (official) and English ...
This is a list of countries by number of languages according to the 22nd edition of Ethnologue (2019). [ 1 ] Papua New Guinea has the largest number of languages in the world.
SIL International's Ethnologue: Languages of the World lists over 7,100 spoken and signed languages. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns codes for most languages; see ISO 639. List of ISO 639-1 codes – two-letter codes (184 major languages) List of ISO 639-2 codes – three-letter codes
Main page; Contents; Current events; Random article; About Wikipedia; ... Wikipedia has several articles cataloging the languages of the world in different ways:
The global language system is the "ingenious pattern of connections between language groups". [1] Dutch sociologist Abram de Swaan developed this theory in 2001 in his book Words of the World: The Global Language System and according to him, "the multilingual connections between language groups do not occur haphazardly, but, on the contrary, they constitute a surprisingly strong and efficient ...