Ethnologue list of most-spoken languages

This list gives the most spoken languages in the world according to the Ethnologue, a widely cited reference for languages around the world. The Ethnologue is sometimes criticised for using out-of-date data, but there is no available fully authoritative source for numbers of first language speakers which uses the same criteria for counting in each case. Another tendency of the Ethnologue is to separate what many others (sometimes including speakers of the varieties) consider to be single languages: see for example comments in this article on English and German.

This list, based on the 15th edition (2005), aims to count first language speakers only (though there are some difficulties with this criterion, as with any other, caused by issues such as bilingualism, differing perceptions of cultural identity and the questions of when language varieties are to be considered different languages or dialects). It also counts macrolanguages, as defined by the Ethnologue, such that Chinese and Arabic are counted as united languages rather than by the varieties also listed, such as Mandarin Chinese or Egyptian Arabic. The year bracketed next to the number of speakers is the year given in the Ethnologue for when the data was taken (for the country with most speakers).

ee also

*List of languages by number of native speakers - a similar list but from various sources
*Ethnologue

External links

* [http://www.ethnologue.com The Ethnologue]
* [http://www2.ignatius.edu/faculty/turner/languages.htm Different lists of the most spoken languages (the Ethnologue list is from a previous, not the 2005, edition).]
* [http://encarta.msn.com/media_701500404/Languages_Spoken_by_More_Than_10_Million_People.html Encarta list, based on data from Ethnologue, but some figures (e.g. for Arabic) widely vary from it]