Estimates of how many people speak a certain language can only ever be generalised, and can vary quite a lot. As an example, English estimates can vary from 275 to 450 million, Spanish from 149 to 300 million plus, Hindi from 150 to 350 million...
Also, the definition of “speaker” can vary. Some surveys of languages only give information on its native speakers. Others count native speakers and secondary speakers as well.
Some languages have large populations of speakers but are almost exclusively in a few countries. Then again, other languages have relatively small populations of native speakers but can be used in many different countries as an official or national language.
Top languages by population:
- Chinese (937,132,000)
- Spanish (332,000,000)
- English (322,000,000)
- Bengali (189,000,000)
- Hindi/Urdu (182,000,000)
- Arabic (174,950,000)
- Portuguese (170,000,000)
- Russian (170,000,000)
- Japanese (125,000,000)
- German (98,000,000)
- French (79,572,000)
Source: The Summer Institute for Linguistics (SIL) Ethnologue Survey (1999)
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