The
30 Most Spoken Languages
of the World


Pos Language Family Script(s) Used Speakers
(Millions)
Where Spoken (Major)
1 Mandarin Sino-Tibetan Chinese Characters 1377 China, Malaysia, Taiwan
2 English Indo-European Latin 1000 USA, UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand
3 Spanish Indo-European Latin 500 Mexico, Central and South America, Spain
4 Hindi Indo-European Devanagari 490 North and Central India
5 Bengali Indo-European Bengali 345 Bangladesh, Eastern India
6 French Indo-European Latin 325 France, Canada, West Africa, Central Africa
7 Arabic Afro-Asiatic Arabic 315 Middle East, Arabia, North Africa
8 Russian Indo-European Cyrillic 265 Russia, Central Asia
9 Portuguese Indo-European Latin 250 Brazil, Portugal, Southern Africa
10 Punjabi Indo-European Gurumukhi 222 Pakistan, India
11 Malay, Indonesian Malayo-Polynesian Latin 175 Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore
12 German Indo-European Latin 169 Germany, Austria, Central Europe
13 Japanese Altaic Chinese Characters and 2 Japanese Alphabets 135 Japan
14 Wu Sino-Tibetan Chinese Characters 90 China
15 Italian Indo-European Latin 84 Italy, Central Europe
16 Javanese Malayo-Polynesian Javanese 82 Indonesia
17 Telugu Dravidian Telugu 79 Southern India
18 Tamil Dravidian Tamil 78 Southern India, Sri Lanka, Malyasia
19 Korean Altaic Hangul 77 Korean Peninsula
20 Marathi Indo-European Devanagari 76 Western India
21 Vietnamese Austroasiatic Based on Latin 76 Vietnam, China
22 Turkish Altaic Latin 72 Turkey, Central Asia
23 Urdu Indo-European Nastaliq 66 Pakistan, India
24 Farsi (Persian) Indo-European Nastaliq 65 Iran, Afghanistan, Central Asia
25 Thai Sino-Tibetan Thai 60 Thailand, Laos
26 Burmese Sino-Tibetan Burmese 56 Myanmar
27 Cantonese Sino-Tibetan Chinese Characters 55 Southern China
28 Kannada Dravidian Kannada 47 Southern India
29 Gujarati Indo-European Gujarati 46 Western India, Kenya
30 Polish Indo-European Latin 46 Poland, Central Europe

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