User:Drmaik/languages by ethnologue

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 The Ethnologue is sometimes criticised for using out-of-date data, but there is no available fully authoritative source for numbers of first language speakers which uses the same criteria for counting in each case.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 aims to count first language speakers only (though there are some difficulties with this criteria, as with any other, caused by issues such as bilingualism, differing perceptions of identity and the questions of when language varieties are to be considered different languages or dialects.

Next languages
javanese 75.5 telugu 69.7 marathi 68.0 Vietnamese 67.4 Korean 67 Tamil 66 french 64.9m Italian 61.5 Punjabi 60.8 Urdu 60.5

Turkish 50.6 Thai 20.2 + 26 other dialects = 46.2 Gujarati 46.1 Polish 42.7 Kannada 35.3 Farsi 24.3 + Dari 7.6= 31.9 for macro