Talk:List of languages by number of native speakers/Archive 9

Chinese Sign Language
The entry clearly states that the number of speakers is unknown. So why is it even included on this page? Looks to me like Chinese Sign Language is somebody's pet topic and they simply needed to see it listed here when, in fact, if we don't know the number of speakers then it deserves no mention at all. Attempting to justify the inclusion by pointing out that there are "perhaps" more speakers than any other sign language is interesting in a trivial way, but still not useful and certainly not justification for inclusion. However, I will cede the point that this is Wikipedia (which is not an encyclopedia) and ultimately any drivel or swill can be included and accepted as long as it is packaged the right way. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.220.193.142 (talk) 21:52, 3 January 2012 (UTC)


 * It is suspected that the number of speakers is over 3M. More than IPSL, for example, which is in the range of 3M. But there isn't any actual figure in E16 that can be cited. — kwami (talk) 04:03, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

ARTICLE NEEDS UPDATE
The article is based on the Ethnologue 15th edition. There is already the 16th edition out. It should be updated, Pook. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.109.202.64 (talk) 22:15, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Here you can find a link that uses the 16th edition:

http://www.top10stop.com/social/top-10-spoken-languages-in-the-world

Pook. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.109.202.64 (talk) 22:18, 3 January 2012 (UTC)


 * It is based on the 16th. I've verified all figures. Is there something I've missed? — kwami (talk) 04:01, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Changing Catalan (Valencian) for only Catalan because Valencian is a dialect also called South-Western Catalan
Please change
 * Catalan (Valencian) ||Indo-European,

for


 * Catalan ||Indo-European,

because Valencian is only one of the 6 dialects of the Catalan Language as the website http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_language (check the maps of this page and the classification)

If you put Valencian that is also called "South-Western Catalan", you should put the other dialects of Catalan. If not, It is more correct to write only Catalan because the page is about Languages and not dialects.

Grego79 (talk) 20:53, 30 January 2012 (UTC)


 * It is known under both names, so both are listed. If they weren't dialects, they wouldn't be listed together. — kwami (talk) 23:50, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Celtic and Gaelic languages need adding?
There are people in the world who have Welsh, Breton, Cornish, Irish, Manx and Scots Gaelic as their mother-tongues (or at least as one of their mother tongues, shared with English/French). These should be included. I say let's gather some information on them and then include them into this article. :-) The Farty Doctor   Talk  00:22, 12 February 2012 (UTC)


 * There aren't enough speakers. The cutoff for this article is 3 million. (Arbitrary, but we'd need to add hundreds of languages if we went down to Celtic.) — kwami (talk) 01:41, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Gross undercount of US native English speakers
There seems to be a gross undercount of US native English speakers relative to native Spanish speakers. According to the citations they only count people over five years as native Engish speaker (because that is the wording on the census form) but seem to count people of all ages as native Spanish speakers in other countries. How can one compare the number of native English and native Spanish speakers when using different age criteria?

If you add the population of the Enlish speaking countries - US, UK, Canada, Australia, Ireland, and New Zealand you get arround 430 million but this article would have one belive that over 100 million are not native English speakers. I don't think so.

In addition to undercounting US English speakers the Spanish speaker page (which I presume was used for the Spanish native speaker total) inclues ALL Hispanics as Spanish spekers. This is not true. The native language most second and third generation Mexicans I know is English. I think that at least half of Hispanics probably speek better English than Spanish. There are a lot of Hispanics with Spanish as their native or second language but the Spanish spearker page assumes 100% which is a big error.

The result of these errors is that Spanish would probably not be the second language in the number of native speakers if the data were correctly interpreted. Maybe some time in the future, but not with the census data cited. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.239.133.132 (talk) 22:05, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

And who says that? an anonimous user? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.109.202.64 (talk) 16:58, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Kurdish Speakers are much more than that.
According to CIA investigation that is mentioned in Wikipedia itself, the number of Kurdish speaking people is between 35-40 million speakers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.10.213.51 (talk) 09:33, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Tagalog
If the total number of Tagalog speakers in the country is around 90%, then given the current population statistic of the Philippines (94,013,200), that's definitely way more than 25 million (in that case it would be 84,611,880), in which case it should be moved way further up, somewhere near the top section. So now we see some discrepancies with how things are being displayed here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.239.113.179 (talk) 23:11, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
 * No discrepancies, this table is for total numbers of native speakers. A larger part of Tagalog speakers are not-native, as explained in Tagalog language article. StasMalyga (talk) 15:28, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

may this will help?
I think this website updated recently. http://www.vistawide.com/languages/top_30_languages.htm--தென்காசி சுப்பிரமணியன் (talk) 17:25, 10 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Nothing there. — kwami (talk) 22:36, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

Article is a mess
Currently, we mix different sources to form one ranking, yet each source has a different definition of a "native speaker", a different counting method, a different counting date and even more importantly, a different level of quality (some sources could be biased - e.g., only Spanish-language sources state that Spanish has 400mio native speakers). I think it would be much better if we made a ranking per source - let's say a column per notable source, so that we not only only avoid mixing up different sources, but also only rely on high-quality sources. An example of such a source would be Ethnologue. Morgengave (talk) 09:15, 31 March 2012 (UTC)


 * That's what we have: the ranking is per Ethnologue; other estimates go in the 'other' column. Since there is no other source for all these languages (not since V&V 1977, anyway), there is no point in a second source-specific column. — kwami (talk) 02:08, 1 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Then we need to correct the first column. Ethnologue has f.e. 329mio native speakers for Spanish, and 328mio for English. Not the respective 400mio and 365mio that are currently shown in the article. Morgengave (talk) 08:57, 1 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Ethn. is updating their figures. Considering how far off the E16 values are from them in several cases, I thought it would be worthwhile using the updated ones. (In most cases there hasn't been any change.) — kwami (talk) 10:06, 1 April 2012 (UTC)
 * I didn't reinstate the updates, but I did revert everything else you did. AFAICT, those were not Ethn. figures. — kwami (talk) 14:01, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

Edit request on 11 May 2012
The following statement referred to the Italian language is wrong or, at least, incorrect: Figure includes "bilinguals" who do not use standard Italian as their main language, who may account for nearly half the population in Italy. In fact, notwithstanding the majority of the people in Italy speaks with a local "sound" that could easily fool unskilled linguists, it has to be mentioned that the reference to dialects (because this seems to be the article writer's mind) should be considered also for German and French languages (at least) or completely omitted. And I don't want to mention the local differences of the most spread languages (e.g. Arabic spoken in Morocco is quite far from the one spoken in Qatar; and what about the English spoken in the Northern and Southern US?). By the way, since no source is shown in the text for this particular aspect I suggest you the reading of "Aspetti dell'italiano parlato" by Klaus Hölker and Christiane Maass (mentioning the fact that the reference sample for the statistics is actually quite limited).

212.77.31.5 (talk) 07:20, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

I am a long time reader, first time contributor of any kind so please take it easy on me. I have an issue with the Chinese Mandarin native number of 845 million used. I think the idea of "official" language is being confused with "native". The only place native mandarin (learned at home) is spoken is in the North and Northeast of China and I would give a wild guess that those numbers don't exceed 300 million. Yes, every child is required to learn mandarin at school and most of them do with varying levels of proficiency; but their "native" language is the one they learn at home from their parents, correct? And in this case, there are many major dialects and many sub dialects many of which are mutually unintelligible. Trust me, I lived there and could tell the difference when trying to speak in mandarin. Now, there are many older people who attended school before the all mandarin standards were put in place or who didn't attend much schooling at all. These people many times do not speak mandarin and only their native tongue. I would compare this system to that of Holland. Every child is required to learn English in school and most speak Dutch (at home) natively. The official language is Dutch and the native language is Dutch. Nobody would argue that the native language for Holland is english would they? Yes, it might be one of the official languages (not quite sure on this though) but is by no means native.

I hope I didn't just make a fool of myself or bring up a topic that has already been vetted; if so please accept my apologies. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.51.141.113 (talk) 17:50, 11 May 2012 (UTC)


 * The same is considered for German as for Italian. I can't vouch for the accuracy of the claim, but that is what our source has. It will be updated within a year.
 * As for Mandarin, that's a pretty common figure. A lot of the population is concentrated in the north and southwest, where M is spoken natively. If you have a source contesting its accuracy, we'll be happy to take a look. — kwami (talk) 18:00, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

Bavarian ?
Why is Bavarian, a regional dialect of standard ('High') German, listed as a separate language? Bavarian and Austrian are regionally spoken varieties, but cannot be considered separate languages any more than British English and American English can be. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.254.222.165 (talk) 18:38, 15 April 2012 (UTC)


 * It's listed as a separate language in our primary source, just as Scots is. We could lump all High German together (would we include Yiddish?), and same for Italian, but that's a judgement call. — kwami (talk) 18:56, 15 April 2012 (UTC)


 * What the hell. Then why don't we list every of the many German dialects seperately? 80.121.119.137 (talk) 14:53, 9 June 2012 (UTC)


 * Yes, you are absolutely right. The problem is that source used for this article is Ethnologue, an American Christian Evangelical institute. Of course a linguistic source would be much better, because Ethnologue is notorious for getting all their facts wrong, but there isn't any other source. As for your comment, I fully agree, it's ridiculous to list Bavarian separately, it makes no sense, it's not consistent and it's not based on linguistics. It's just one of those hundred awkward errors in Ethnologue.Jeppiz (talk) 19:48, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

Wannabe official?
I'm not going to boldly edit this because I suspect such an edit without discussion would be taken as an insult, but: is "wants to be an official language of the UN" really something we should say about Bengali? A language as such does not have feelings. The Bengali language cannot want anything. At best we could say that many people who speak Bengali want their language to be an official language of the UN; but that also seems like a questionable statement. It's very hard to say anything accurate about what a diverse group of 300 million people actually wants; and pretty much anybody speaking any language might say "yes" to the question "do you want your language to be official?" so it's not clear that this would be an interesting statement about Bengali even if it were true. The source cited for the claim is a news article reporting a statement by the Prime Minister of Bangladesh, and it's not clear it really meets Wikipedia's reliability and notability standards. I expect we can also find news articles in which notable persons say that they think Klingon should be an official language of the UN. I suggest that the article would be better without the claim that Bengali "wants to be official." If someone wants to keep the citation, it would be accurate to say "The Prime Minister of Bangladesh wants Bengali to be an official language of the UN," and I wouldn't object to rewording it to that, but I think doing so would make it obvious why this point really shouldn't be mentioned in the article at all. 130.179.29.61 (talk) 13:46, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

Persian
In the article for the Persian Language it states: "Persian has ca. 110 million native speakers". And here it says 39 million native speakers. WTH, this article is really a mess. 80.121.119.137 (talk) 14:56, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia is not a reliable source. Secondly, one of the figures where that was obtained appears to fall under WP:SYNTH. Can't verify the second figure. Thirdly, the data where the first figure was obtained is far from reliable. Even though they are from the CIA/US census bureau, their population data conflicts with every major organization I've seen including census bureau for each country. Elockid  ( Talk ) 18:15, 9 June 2012 (UTC)


 * You are absolutely right, the number given for Persian speakers in this article has no basis in reality. The problem is that source used for this article is Ethnologue, an American Christian Evangelical institute. Of course a linguistic source would be much better, because Ethnologue is notorious for getting all their facts wrong, but there isn't any other source that list all languages by native speakers. Given how bad this list is, and given that it only builds on what a group of evangelical christian missionaries have made up about languages, it might be better to delete the article altogether.Jeppiz (talk) 19:48, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

hindustani
hindustani has native speakers 325 million and total speakers 490 milion. it should come second to mandarin. Sreejiththulaseedharan (talk) 12:09, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

Actually, according to the latest information from census information in India alone, Hindi has 551 million and Urdu 59 million, which adds up to 610 million Hindustani speakers in India alone. That being said, if you assume that most of Pakistan's population has some sort of L2 knowledge of Urdu, you get about 700-750 million L1 and L2 speakers of Hindustani. By that logic, it definitely comes ahead of Spanish. --Akhipill (talk) 05:48, 17 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Under that definition of "Hindi", we should add Portuguese and maybe French to "Spanish", so it might still be ahead. The language as we have it here is just Hindustani, excluding Bhojpuri, Rajasthani, Panjabi, etc. The number of people who can understand Urdu, incl. L2 speakers, is somewhere around 490M. — kwami (talk) 05:58, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Language families such as Hindustani are so specifically defined precisely so they can avoid arguments like the above, Kwami. Akhipill also did not say anyone except Hindi and Urdu speakers. However, being a speaker is a far cry from being a native speaker. --—  r obbie  page talk 19:05, 17 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Hindustani may be precisely defined (in some sources only), but Akhipill is talking about Hindi, which is ambiguous. You only have to visit the Indian census to see that the speakers themselves are inconsistent as to whether they speak Hindi or not. It's analogous to some French, Spanish, and Italian speakers reporting that they speak "Latin", and then trying to cite how many Latin speakers there are. The Indian census figures are close to worthless. — kwami (talk) 22:44, 17 July 2012 (UTC)


 * He was talking about both but, he's wrong because he's talking about total speakers, not total native speakers. I think I see where you are coming from too .. while I doubt the Indian census data is worthless, I am sure any number that high and different from other sources must be talking about non-native speakers. --—  r obbie  page talk 23:03, 17 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Yeah, "almost worthless" was a bit strong. But you can see the problems of self-identification: The census number is only valid if we include all of the languages which native speakers sometimes call "Hindi", which is much broader than what we call Hindustani on WP. — kwami (talk) 00:17, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

Italian
"Figure includes "bilinguals" who do not use standard Italian as their main language, who may account for nearly half the population in Italy" Is there a reliable source for this? I am Italian, and I think it's wrong. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.196.178.211 (talk) 11:15, 14 June 2012 (UTC)


 * Ethnologue. You'd need a source that most Italians do not speak Calabrian, Neopolitan, Venetian, etc. — kwami (talk) 05:48, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

saraiki language
kindly saraiki be added in list. Punjabi and saraiki are different languages. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 182.186.68.56 (talk) 08:33, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Edit request on 22 July 2012
update on turkish 1987 to 2006

Anatolian Turkish: in Turkey, Middleeast, Balkans and Germany 83.000.000 mother-language speakers and 88.000.000 in total. Source: http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_243_en.pdf

Smartdark (talk) 08:25, 22 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: After 4 days and ten edits you can correct it yourself.--Canoe1967 (talk) 00:31, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

Ethnologue as a suitable source
I am doubting Ethologue as a suitable source. They always had a mix of data from different times, but managed to be reasonably accurate and suitable in the 1980s. But much has changed since then, unfortunately not their sources. The total number of speaking people in the world is stuck at 5 billion people, according to ethnologue. So there are more or less 2 billion people under the age of 2, or else Ethnologue could use better sources to cover the other nearly 30% of the population not included in the statistics. --—  r obbie  page talk 16:15, 4 July 2012 (UTC)


 * I fully agree. There are numerous countries where the total population according to Ethnologue is just about 50% of the real population of the country; there are also some exceptions where the population given by Ethnologue far exceeds the population of a country or a region. What is more, Ethnologue has an unfortunate tendency to get their classifications spectularly wrong. We need to keep in mind that it is a religious organization, not an academic one. As an academic myself, I long ago stopped citing Ethnologue, and I don't accept references to it in the academic papers I review for journals, because of the many errors. It is quite simply not a reliable source.Jeppiz (talk) 14:20, 8 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Yes, but what can we use instead? We wouldn't need a ref for all the langs in the world, one with langs > 1M speakers would do. But the only ones I'm aware of are things like almanacs which are even less reliable than Ethn. — kwami (talk) 17:50, 8 July 2012 (UTC)


 * I had a look at the Swedish version of this article. It uses the national encyclopedia of Sweden for the world's 100 largest languages. While there are fewer languages than in this article, it strikes me as more reliable and realistic. I think we should keep looking for at least a few days, but I also think that a reliable list of 100 languages is preferable to an unreliable list of 200-300 languages.Jeppiz (talk) 18:16, 8 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Agreed. — kwami (talk) 20:27, 8 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Ethnologue is hopelessly out-of-date and biased against English. In my opinion, it's not a reliable source. Mcarling (talk) 15:51, 31 August 2012 (UTC)


 * It's not biased against English, it's just inconsistent from one language to another, and based on sources of varying quality. — kwami (talk) 17:33, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Decimal marks
Please change the decimal marks to periods, since this is the custom for articles in English. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.102.110.54 (talk) 18:31, 21 August 2012 (UTC)


 * DoneJeppiz (talk) 19:13, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Bulgarian Language
According to the following article: Bulgarian language, there are between 9 and 12 million speakers of Bulgarian (and not including people that use it as secondary language in Turkey, Macedonia, etc.). So the current article is definitely inconsistent. Please fix. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.43.226.5 (talk) 07:21, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Catalan
According to the following article: Catalan language, there are 11 million speakers of Catalan, so I think it should be included. --UlisesRey 11:54, 8 September 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by UlisesRey (talk • contribs)

French
The French figures (both "native" and "total") are definitely too low. The combined population of France, Quebec, French-speaking Belgium and French-speaking Switzerland is close to 80 million. (Yes, I'm aware of the existence of Breton/Basque/Occitan/etc. speakers in France, but nowadays almost 100% of these people are bilingual, and the few non-native French speakers are elderly.) And then you have the French-speaking upper classes in many African countries, in Lebanon, Mauritius, Haiti, and so on. (To say nothing of the tens of millions of Africans who only know how to read and write in French, because their "native" languages are seldom used in writing.) The United States has 1.6 million people who speak French in the home, too - were they counted? 12.239.145.114 (talk) 01:26, 26 May 2012 (UTC)
 * France is a country with a very high percentage of immigrants and their native language is not French. Outside Europe and Quebec there are many second or third language speakers, but hardly any native speakers. So it makes sense that Etnologue and other reliable sources cite a number of around 70mio. Morgengave (talk) 10:52, 26 May 2012 (UTC)
 * If I may correct you: by saying "Etnologue and other reliable sources" you imply that Etnologue is a reliable source. It is not, it is notoriously unreliable and we should keep in mind that it is a Christian missionary organization, not a linguistic one. Speaking as an academic, I can assure you that Etnologue is not credible. That, however, is POV. As for the actual question at hand: yes, the French figures are too low and I don't thing anyone take them seriously. On the other hand, what matters the most if we are to have a list of this kind is to have one source for all languages. The list will always be pretty bad, so my own preference would be to delete it altogether as it's not reliable.Jeppiz (talk) 22:16, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
 * You did not "correct" me, no worries there. As far as I know, there's not an academic source making scientifically rigid estimates of native speakers for all the languages in the world. So we use figures that are well-cited, which are generally considered reliable and which are in accordance with other sources generally considered reliable. ("Reliability" when it comes to counting number of speakers is indeed a relative issue.) In addition, I still haven't found another source-that-is-generally-considered-reliable that gives a much higher number of French native speakers. Even the French language article struggles with this fact. Their high estimate for native speakers comes from the Francophonie website - an organization which has as purpose the promotion of the language. This organization does not define the term "native speaker", does not provide details on the number it uses, or on its calculation method, and is inherently a dubious source as it has a clear incentive to inflate the numbers of the language. It's surprising to many but French has an unique position among the world's languages - it has many able speakers spread over the world, but only a relatively low number of native speakers. On one point I fully agree with you: that we should only use one source. Morgengave (talk) 22:29, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Agreed. Before we switched over to Ethnologue-only, the article was a nightmare, with people trying to game the system to move their language up as high as possible, and fighting over languages which passed them by. — kwami (talk) 22:55, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, we all agree on this part. Ethnologue is generally unreliable, but for this kind of article we have (as of yet, at least) no option. While I would never recommend Ethnologue for information about individual languages or countries (where real academic information is always easily available), an article of this kind must be built on a single source, not on people cherry-picking the source that best suits their motives.Jeppiz (talk) 19:09, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
 * With Catalan is the other way round. The number of native speakers according to Ethnologue is larger than the number of people who can speak Catalan according to the census, or even compared to population in the territories in which Catalan is spoken. Eyesighter (talk) 05:00, 30 June 2012 (UTC)
 * That's false: 7,565,603 (Catalonia) + 1,106,049 (Balearic Islands) + 5,111,706 (Valencian Country) = 13,783,358. Not the whole Valencian Country is catalan-speaking, but the most populated territories are so. Also, you should add Andorra, La Franja, Rousillon, L'Alguer.--88.6.167.66 (talk) 09:01, 21 August 2012 (UTC)


 * French-speaking countries : Belgium (Wallonia, Brussels), Canada (particularly Quebec, New Brunswick and Eastern parts of Ontario), France, Switzerland : What about Cameroon, Senegal, Ivory Coast and the whole former Afrique Occidentale Française and Afrique Equatoriale Française ? That is a rather strange omission given the population figures of these countries. 82.226.27.88 (talk) 20:04, 29 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Additional information :
 * Congo 71 M (omitted in the list. Thanks for them !)
 * France 65 M
 * Ivory Coast 20M
 * Cameroon 19 M (all bilingual by education, 2/3 mosty French, 1/3 mostly English)
 * Senegal 12 M
 * The number for French, if you add québec, should therefore be at least 180 M => Edit request.
 * 82.226.27.88 (talk) 20:16, 29 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I too think that the figure in the article omits at least some 10 million native speakers - spread all over the world including Africa. I also agree that Ethnologue is ridiculous (and I even think its ubiquitous use is one of the anglophone Wikipedia's biggest flaws causing a lot of ignorance). As of Cameroon, the French-English ratio is not 2:1 but 4:1 (as lots of reliable sources in many Wikipedias concordantly state). 217.81.136.42 (talk) 16:05, 13 October 2012 (UTC)


 * You have no source that there are 70M native French speakers in Congo. — kwami (talk) 03:18, 30 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Don't you have the Internet ?
 * http://www.populationdata.net/index2.php?option=pays&pid=176&nom=republique_democratique_du_congo
 * French is the official language of Congo, and was already as soon as 1921. Could you state us what is in your opinion a "native language" if it is not the one children learn in school, which is used in everyday life, and has been for more than 90 years ? 212.198.138.86 (talk) 09:07, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

New list based on new source (Nationalencyclopedin)
Following the broad consensus on this page that SIL Ethnologue isn't a good source, I proposed about a month ago to use the list in Nationalencyclopedin, which is also used as the source for the Swedish version of this article. I suggested we should keep looking, and then use NE instead of SIL if we did not find a better solution. As more than a month has passed with no other solution proposed, and no opposition to my proposed idea, I've now rewritten the list based on NE.

I'm the first to say that NE is not ideal either. Editing the list, I could easily find some claims about numbers that I doubt. Having said that, I still believe this list to be more reliable than SIL's. It appears to be free of the chauvinistic bias that often plague articles of this type, the lack of bias evidenced by the fact that Swedish actually drops in the new list based on the Swedish source. It should come as no surprise that the changes in ranking is minimal for the largest languages, and that the differences between the new list and the old list increase the smaller the languages become. I realize this new list won't please everybody, but as we all know, it's vital to have a list based on one source to avoid an eternal edit war with different users inserting different figures from different sources whose validity we cannot know. If someone finds a better list, I'm all for using that list! In the meantime, I think this is the best (or the least bad) we've got.Jeppiz (talk) 14:30, 21 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Is there an online link/an English edition? Elockid  ( Talk ) 02:27, 22 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Yes, the article can be found online (http://www.ne.se/spr%C3%A5k).Jeppiz (talk) 07:13, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Does that mean that the estimates have been corrected for population growth? Or do we have the equivalent of Ethnologue data without the dates?
 * based on estimates published in 2007

BTW, the Hindi data is completely screwed up, reflecting the problems of the Indian census. Most of the other Hindi languages are simply wrong. — kwami (talk) 20:43, 2 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Yes, I also though the Hindi data looked odd. As I said, I'd be happy to exchange it for a more reliable list, but at least this is better than Ethnologue or everybody inserting whatever data they like. But I very much see it as the least bad thing and as a temporary measure, I really hope we could find a better source.Jeppiz (talk) 18:56, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

A Swedish encyclopedia hardly seems like a very good source. And at least Ethnologue shows its work in terms of explaining what the source of each number is. john k (talk) 05:36, 3 September 2012 (UTC)
 * John, is a Swedish encyclopedia worse than a German, French, Turkish or Vietnamese encyclopedia? It's an encyclopedia with a solid reputation, though I agree that a similar list from a reliable encyclopedia in English would of course be better. If this source isn't reliable either, then we should perhaps consider deleting the article altogether? If there is no reliable source, articles like this one are meaningless. I would regret that, though, as I think the list is of interest to many people.Jeppiz (talk) 18:56, 3 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I'd prefer not to use any encyclopedia as a source. If we're going to use an Encyclopedia, it should be in English.  If we have to use a non-English encyclopedia, one in German or French would be best, but really, we shouldn't use a foreign language encyclopedia at all. As for deleting this article, that is silly.  The article is useful even if it is not completely accurate (which is impossible, anyway).  john k (talk) 21:45, 3 September 2012 (UTC)


 * The language doesn't matter. But an enc. is a 3ary source, which we don't normally use. That said, Ethn. is only a catalogue; what it has going for it is that it specifies its sources most of the time. If we can't verify where the Swedish enc. got its data from, then there's no reason to think it's better than Ethn., and I'd want to revert the page. The Swedish enc. is demonstrably wrong. — kwami (talk) 06:35, 4 September 2012 (UTC)


 * To John K: It would be much more helpful if you would suggest what source you want rather than what source you don't want.
 * To Kwami: Yes, the Swedish encyclopedia is demonstrably wrong, though Ethnologue is even worse. I really do not see the point in "comparing" data from 2010 with data from the 1970s, as is the case for some countries and languages with Ethnologue. It renders the whole idea of a list meaningless. As far as I can remember, the corresponding list on German Wikipedia was deleted because the users concluded that no reliable list could be compiled.Jeppiz (talk) 10:56, 4 September 2012 (UTC)


 * But is the Swedish source any different? Are they also comparing data across decades, or have they corrected for population growth? If they have, great, but if they haven't, Ethn. is better, because at least they're upfront about it. — kwami (talk) 20:59, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, this, more or less. And I'll just say that I think this list is highly valuable even if it's just a recapitulation of the contradictory and not very reliable Ethnologue data.  Just having a rough list of the languages with the most speakers, even if it has a lot of problems, is highly valuable.  john k (talk) 02:50, 5 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I agree that the list is valuable and I also agree that the Swedish encyclopedia is not good. I do think it's list looks more correct (well, less incorrect) than the one we had before. However, I will not stand in the way of going back to Ethnologue. If we do, I would like to make some suggestions:
 * We limit the list to the largest languages. I'm sure we all agree that while there are always problems, they multiply for smaller languages. The actual order of languages is almost identical for Ethnologue and NE for the ten largest languages. I would recommend that we stick to only the 100 largest, or that we make a cut at 10 millions. With 6000 languages in the world (very rougly estimated) we have to make a cut somewhere.
 * The French version of this article uses Ethnologue, but has a whole section devoted to describing why the data is not always correct. I'd recommend a similar section here, regardless of which source we use. The risk is that someone will link to this article to make some very definite claims, believing the list to be completely accurate instead of the rought estimate it will always be.Jeppiz (talk) 09:26, 5 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't feel all that strongly about which source we use - I'd maybe slightly prefer ethnologue if we can't find a bit more transparency from the Swedish list, but I don't care that much. I fully agree with the idea of cutting it off with the 100 largest or so, and with the idea of having an explicit discussion of limitations of the source and the approximate nature of the list. john k (talk) 23:33, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Why don't we just present both? Then it should be obvious how tentative the rankings are. — kwami (talk) 20:35, 9 September 2012 (UTC)


 * That is an excellent point, I'm certainly in favour of presenting both. Preferably with a paragraph like the one in the French version about the difficulties and inaccuracies with rankings like these.Jeppiz (talk) 22:28, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

I am the one responsible for the estimates from the Swedish encyclopaedia. There are several reasons why they differ from those in the Ethnologue and other sources, the main one being that I’ve tried to include immigrant languages. I have taken into account census figures, estimates by others (including, of course, the Ethnologue), and reports in the sociolinguistic literature. Those interested can contact me ([from my user page]) for a copy of the file underlying my calculations.
 * My figures

My estimates need not necessarily be the best for every single individual country or language, but for the world as a whole, I am fairly convinced that my figures are more reliable than the alternatives.

One obvious shortcoming is that I have assumed that I have assigned each individual one and only one mother tongue, even though it is of course possible to have several. --Mikael Parkvall (talk) 00:03, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

Edit request on 22 September 2012
hebrew ?????????????????????????

84.109.140.142 (talk) 21:31, 22 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Not in the ref, cuz not enough speakers. — kwami (talk) 02:11, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Incorrect populations
Example: English is spoken in USA, UK, Australia, and a few others.

Yet the totals of the 2007 one only roughly match the populations of USA + UK and do not include Australia or others.

And the 2009 estimates only equal the population of the USA! And don't include the UK, Australia, or others.

The numbers are obviously very very underestimated for english. And likely to be wrong for others too.

Basically what is the point in giving numbers at all if they are not correct?

All these need to be recalculated, according to counting the populations of the countries listed alongside each language, in the tables.

Thanks. Wikipedia is becoming more and more and more out of date and giving years old numbers too often. We only want up to date numbers not years old ones! And in this case even the years old ones 2007 or 2009 are incorrect for the populations at that time anyway. As well as incorrect for today.

I've just calculated for English, in the countries listed, and according to today's estimates (south africa only counted as 8% of it's population since that is what the south africa page lists as speaking english). The total for native English speakers in the countries listed in the table then, is 443 million. That is more than 73 million different from the 2007 amount in the article, and 115 million different from the 2009 ethnologue estimate (although I see that says it is taking 2000 - 2006 estimates). 2012 is at least 443 million. Let's update the entire list please! Thank you.

Spanish (Spain + Hispanic America) is at least 422 million today.

French (France, Belgium, Quebec, 20.4% of Switzerland) is at least 85 million today.

Arabic is about 300 million today, but that is a rough estimation by adding Syria (currently suspended) to the Arab league population, I didn't calculate by individual countries.

German (Germany, Austria, 63.7% of Switzerland) is at least 95 million today.

[Anon.]

Additionally the percentages don't always match the populations. For example:

[Another Anon.]


 * We're not going to modify the languages individually. See note I added to the top of this page. — kwami (talk) 00:47, 12 October 2012 (UTC)


 * Keep in mind that a significant percentage of the residents in English-speaking countries like the United States and Canada actually don't speak English as a first/native language. Doing some quick (and very rough) math with the latest (2010/2011) Census figures, the approximate number of native English speakers in the major Anglophone countries is as follows:


 * United States: 250 million
 * UK and Ireland: 62 million
 * Australia: 20 million
 * Canada: 19 million
 * South Africa: 4.9 million
 * New Zealand: 3.1 million


 * That gives us a total of roughly 360 million, which is approximately the number of native speakers of English reported in the Wikipedia. As for French, there are approximately 77 million native speakers in the core francophone countries distributed as follows:


 * France: 63 million
 * Canada: 7 million
 * Belgium: 4.5 million
 * Switzerland: 2.5 million


 * If we take into account both first and second language speakers, the figure for English probably doubles to roughly 700 million, while the figure for French may be as high as 200 million. 200.232.181.225 (talk) 00:21, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Russian
Russian is not mutually intelligible with Ukrainian and Belarussian. This wide-spread stereotype came from Soviet propaganda that tried to convince people they are not three different nations, but one. Ukrainians and Belarussians speak Russian not because of it's similarity, but because of Russian influence. Russians from bordering regions can hardly speak Ukrainian, but in general Russians can only understand some similar words, but not the whole meaning of what has been said. Oleksandr Rodynenko (talk) 14:40, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Edit request on 8 March 2013
There are more than 90 million native Tamil speakers in the world. So please change the population count accordingly..


 * Tamil || 70 || 2%||Tamil Nadu, Karnataka (India), Sri Lanka, Singapore, Malaysia, Mauritius, pondicherry("India")
 * Tamil || 70 || 2%||Tamil Nadu, Karnataka (India), Sri Lanka, Singapore, Malaysia, Mauritius, pondicherry("India")

VivekChandran0705 (talk) 08:34, 8 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done, except I used the "Puducherry" name. Although this request is not accompanied by a source, it checks out with sources on the Puducherry and Tamil language articles. &mdash; KuyaBriBri Talk 15:15, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

Hindi/Urdu
Mainly spoken in Column

There are native Hindi speakers in Fiji, Mauritus, Surinam and Nepal the dialicts are little different. There is a wikipedia article on Fiji Hindi as well so I think it is approprite to expand this list. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Somuji (talk • contribs) 06:54, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Hindi and Urdu are not only the Hindi-Urdu but based on the dialect(Khariboli), they are just simply different Register (sociolinguistics) of the language. A register is basically a different variety or version of a language used in a specific social setting; as in the case with Hindi-Urdu, it is predominantly religious but also national.

Oddly enough, Serbo-Croatian-Bosnian-Montenegrin are recognized as a single language in this list as well as Indonesian-Malay. All of these are politically charged yet when it comes to Urdu and Hindi, no one corrected it. In fact, quite a lot of dialects of Hindi are included as separate languages. Arabic, German, and Italian are pretty much language groups as well yet those got grouped together.

Someone please correct this.

ThisguyYEAH (talk) 23:09, 2 October 2012 (UTC)


 * It is corrected in the 2nd table. The 1st, however, is just a mirror of our source. — kwami (talk) 23:59, 2 October 2012 (UTC)


 * The current version of the article displays the name Hindi, while directing to the article Hindi. That article states that "Hindi, is a standardised and sanskritised register of the Hindustani language". So, shouldn't the name given in this list be "Hindustani" instead? Or at least the link should direct to the page Hindustani language. --Wahj-asSaif (talk) 06:20, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

Inconsistencies in Calculations
There are inconsistencies in the list. All the dialects of Arabic languages were summed up to reach a high number. If this is what to do to calculate the number of native speakers of a language, you should apply the same rule to all languages. Otherwise, you cannot compare only one dialect with sum of all dialects of a language. Same for Kurdish. All the dialects were summed up to achieve 20 millions. But these people don't understand each other at all. Very wrong statistics. For Turkish, you did not sum even the number of people speaking Oghuz Turkish, which is understandable by all the speakers (spoken in Turkey, Azerbaijan, Iran, Irak, Syria and Balkan countries). The list must be re-arranged in a more consistent way. Please establish a rule, first, and then calculate the real numbers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Yasemin83 (talk • contribs) 22:07, 13 March 2013 (UTC)


 * While I don't deny that you have a point, this is not about "us" adding up the numbers. We use the data that the sources give. This article builds on two sources that rank languages according to their number of speakers, Nationalencyklopedin and Ethnologue. If you have another WP:RS source that list languages according the number of speakers, you are welcome to present it here on the talk page.Jeppiz (talk) 22:27, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Reply
USA population 313 million. Are you saying that 60 million people in USA cannot speak english? All children who go to a school will have to speak english. From age 4 at least. Children do not learn language until age 1 roughly. So when do you count "native" language as being counted from? Between 1 and 4, but not after 4 years old when most children do most of their talking? And which will be their native languages as far as they are concerned from age 4 and meeting other children anyway and being in their living memory anyway. A person is not born with any language, they have to learn any language. Now most children do not remember much before 2 or 3 or 4 years old. And so if their language at age 4 is english, then it will be a native language to them. All children in english language countries have to speak english in the school system. Therefore all people who were living in the country from age 4 or younger, will have english as their native language. The only few people who will not have english as their native language are those who come to the country as immigrants as an older child of an age when their first language is quite developed and so a second language becomes less naturally picked up, and has to be learned. Or an adult. Almost all people in a country who were born in the country, must have the native language of that country. And if they have more than one native language, because their parents were immigrants, but the child was born in the country. Then english (or the language of that country) will still be the child's native language, alongside the language of their parents. A language that you speak as your main language at 4 years old when going to school, and speak all your life afterwards, is a native language, not a second language. If you want to do a zero sum game, on the languages, to only allow one to be a native language. Then in that case, english should be counted as the native language, and the parents language should be counted as a second language. Since english will be the main language for any child born in an english speaking country. The language of your parents doesn't make it your native language, your parents are different people than you. The language of the country or area you are born in, is the primary deciding factor in what a child's native language is, not the native language of their parents if it is different (since the parent's native language may have been something else, but if their child is born in a country and goes to primary school or nursery school speaking the language of the country then the child is a native speaker of the country it is born in). Yes, nearly all children born in an english speaking country have english as their native language. If they didn't they would find it impossible to get any school education, or have many friends, or to live in the country successfully. If you live in an english speaking country you would know this, so I assume that you do not. You can count all populations of english language countries, as speaking english natively, and minus the number of immigrants if you want to minus something, but this would be a much smaller minus than the 60 million you took from USA, and would be only a couple of million or few million from the UK. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.240.131.101 (talk) 23:20, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Pleas do NAME the Arabic speaking countries within the list
It is very INSULTING to not be able to see the names of the countries within the list, yet other countries get named which DOES promote them and put them in a better image and in an advantage. Please, stop ignoring us AND YOUR HATE, and in the Arabic section of the list, pleas enter the following: North Africa, Western Asia (Middle East), Which includes: (Then name the 22 Arab countries AT LEAST). Thank you! Rewayah - Dubai, 2013/4/25 08:13 am. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.97.220.121 (talk) 04:14, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Turkish language
Whats wrong with Turkish language? why there isnt any indications about native turkish speakers who live in europe?By the way turkish population according to 2012census is "75 627 384" people,so its the same for native Turkish speakers.

http://www.tuik.gov.tr/PreHaberBultenleri.do?id=13425

so you have to update informations about turkish speakers!--78.189.170.134 (talk) 09:09, 5 May 2013 (UTC)


 * As pointed out many times, we need a source that lists all languages. We are not going to change the data for just one language, no matter which language. A list of this kind needs to build on uniform data. (For the record, around 25% of the Turkish population is not native Turkish speakers, but that's beside the point.)Jeppiz (talk) 10:23, 5 May 2013 (UTC)


 * around %25 of turkish population is not naive Turkish speaker? where is your source about it? Also according to the Constitution of Turkey the official language is Turkish. EEducation language is Turkish,every turkish citizen speaks Turkish language and considering as Turk,so it means 75 627 384 speaks Turkish as main language.Link of TÜİK which i shared before is official bu the way.--78.189.170.134 (talk) 16:19, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
 * The sources are clearly indicated above each chart. All the data in each chart derive from the same source, so that comparisons are consistent. Some of the sources do need an update, but we must keep to the primary sources and not make assumptions. Specifically, please note that this article is about native speakers. Second languages are not considered, even if it is the official language of a country. See List of languages by total number of speakers.--Megustalastrufas (talk) 12:21, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

Turkic Language
Turkic languages term used in place of Turkish Language. Turkic language spoken in Turkey, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Krgyzhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, North Cyprus and other defacto Turkic states. Turkic languages are spoken as a native language by some 170 million people. I think If Chinese is called Mandarian then Turkish must be called Turkic. Erlik.khan (talk) 06:43, 13 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Turkic is a family of languages, not a language. It is divided in diferent groups of languages, which have varying degrees of mutual intelligibility. In that sense, it is comparable to Romance languages, with spanish, french, italian or portuguese having also similarly varying degrees of intelligibility. Following that example, Kazakh and Turkish are as mutually intelligible as French and Spanish. It would not make sense to list Romance languages, as it does not make sense to list Turkic languages here. --Megustalastrufas (talk) 11:12, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Javanese ?
Should that be Japanese ? -- Jared Mauch — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.167.0.106 (talk) 21:43, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

No, Javanese is spoken by about 60-90 million people living on the island of Java,in the central and eastern portions (in the western part they speak Sundanese). HOWEVER, the national language of Indonesian is NOT accurately listed. I would estimate that Indonesian, the national language used in all schools and mass media, is spoken by 85% of the 240 million population. If it is combined with Malaysian (Malay), which is not quite the same, then the number would increase by about 20-25 million. Due to the emphasis on Indonesian, Javanese is declining. I do not hear it spoken on the street with the "saturation" I first observed in 1980. I live in the central part of Java (now on my 29th year). The CIA factbook is not a reliable source (they spend too much time in covert activities). Also, Javanese is not spoken outside of Java and to a limited degree in Suriname. It is NOT spoken all over SE Asia except by the Javanese diaspora.

Languages of Italy
The Italian language is spoken by 55 million of people (natives) and 61 million of people (total) Italian (Ethnologue). According to Ethnologue Venetian Venetian (Ethnologue), Lombard Lombard (Ethnologue) and Neapolitan Neapolitan (Ethnologue) have less speakers than what the article says. So I tried to correct them. But two user are reverting my changes and one of them said that I will be blocked. But I'm just using Ethnologue data for the Ethnologue chart inside the article. --Walter J. Rotelmayer (talk) 21:06, 6 June 2013 (UTC)


 * It's not native vs total, it's Italy vs total. And the value for Italy includes L2 speakers.  — kwami (talk) 23:02, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

French
I was wondering why Luxembourg isn't listed in the countries that speak French. It's an official language of the country according to demographics, 96% of inhabitants can speak the language and it's a prerequisite for graduating school. Puckeylut (talk) 08:06, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Comment: I would tend to agree with you but French is not their native language. Their native language is Luxembourgish. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.246.106.4 (talk) 15:02, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

English and Spanish
Only 335 million native speakers for English is absolutely ridiculous. The US and Canada together have 340, UK has 65, Australia and NZ another 30, South Africa another 50 and Ireland 5. Just for those countries, it amounts to 490 million.

And there are many other countries where English is the first language of a significant part of the population such as Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Singapore or Hong Kong.

The ranking classifying Spanish as the second language per native speakers is a joke.

Please someone do something about this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.246.106.4 (talk) 08:40, 26 June 2013 (UTC)


 * I believe your assumptions are a little high. For example, South Africa (see page 28) has less than 5 million native English speakers. Also, Anglophone countries tend to have high numbers of immigrant populations. For example, the US has more than 40 million immigrants. If we make the assumption that most of the immigrants have a native language other than English, then that's a significant reduction in the amount of native English speakers. The US census bureau actually list the number of English only speakers as just over 230 million. So we can probably see a number around there (it seems that some consider this as the native language total). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Elockid (talk • contribs) 10:48, 1 July 2013


 * It sounded a bit off to me at first as well, but the numbers are for the amount of people who speak a given language first, not the number who can speak a given language. Also, you can't just add up the populations of every country where English is the majority-spoken language and expect your numbers to be accurate. For example, only 80% of Americans speak English as their first language (only 69% in Texas) and 22% of Canadians speak only French. — Ortzinator (talk) 16:11, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Except that's wrong.96.231.17.247 (talk) 06:26, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

English
Alone in USA there are 300 MIO people and you say there are 300 MIO native english speakers... Don't you forget there are also other countries speaking english? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.237.221.98 (talk) 12:09, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

redirect Largest Language
Hindi is spoken by 1200 million people all over the world. Please refer Linguistic research study available at www.drjpnautiyal.com the study claims that Hindi is Largest Language in the world. much easy — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ab8 (talk • contribs) 09:38, 12 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Easier but not accurate. Largest language is not necessarily the same as largest language by native speakers. Good arguments could be made for English being larger than Mandarin, or for French being larger than German or even Portuguese. Not so for native speakers, so it's an important qualification of what the list is about.Jeppiz (talk) 12:13, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

saraiki
Saraiki is also spoken in punjab.Its papulation is more than 60 million.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 182.186.86.159 (talk) 15:47, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

That may well be so, but this list builds on established sources. They are not perfect, but we cannot have a list unless the whole list builds on the same source. So as long as there is no reliable source that lists languages by numbers of native speakers and include language X, then language X is not included here.Jeppiz (talk) 15:04, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Oromo language list
Oromo is talked natively by aproximetly 35M people and therefore you need to edit it

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oromo_people

Theveryting (talk) 16:06, 10 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: We don't use Wikipedia pages as sources. I have reverted your edits to Oromo language for the same reason, as the 25M figure there was sourced to an outside source. If it is to be changed, we need a reliable source outside Wikipedia to give an up-to-date number. Please note that the figure we need is the number of native speakers of the Oromo language, not the number of Oromo people. --Stfg (talk) 13:38, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Assessment comment
Substituted at 20:43, 3 May 2016 (UTC)