100 Most Spoken Languages in the World

Mandarin is a group of Sinitic (Chinese) languages spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. The group includes the Beijing dialect, the basis of the phonology of Standard Chinese. Because Mandarin originated in North China and most Mandarin languages and dialects are found in the north,...Read More

Spanish is a Romance language that originated in the Iberian Peninsula of Europe. Today, it is a global language with nearly 500 million native speakers, mainly in Spain and the Americas. It is the world’s second-most spoken native language after Mandarin Chinese, and the world’s fourth-most spoken language overall after English, Mandarin Chinese, and Hindi.

English is a West Germanic language first spoken in early medieval England, which has eventually become the leading language of international discourse in the 21st century. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the area of Great Britain that later took...Read More

Hindi, or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi, is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in India. Hindi has been described as a standardised and Sanskritised register of the Hindustani language, which itself is based primarily on the Khariboli dialect of Delhi and neighbouring areas of Northern India....Read More

Portuguese is a Romance language originating in the Iberian Peninsula of Europe. It is the sole official language of Portugal, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, São Tomé and Príncipe, and Brazil, while having co-official language status in East Timor, Equatorial Guinea, and Macau....Read More

Urdu is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in South Asia. It is the official national language and lingua franca of Pakistan. In India, Urdu is an Eighth Schedule language whose status, function, and cultural heritage is recognized by the Constitution of India; it has some form of official status...Read More

Japanese is an East Asian language spoken by about 128 million people, primarily in Japan, where it is the national language. It is a member of the Japonic (or Japanese-Ryukyuan) language family, and its relation to other languages, such as Korean, is debated. Japonic languages have been grouped with other language families such as Ainu, Austroasiatic, and the now-discredited Altaic, but none of these proposals has gained widespread acceptance.

Arabic is a Semitic language that first emerged in the 1st to 4th centuries CE. It is now the lingua franca of the Arab world. It is named after the Arabs, a term initially used to describe peoples living in the Arabian Peninsula bounded by eastern Egypt in the west, Mesopotamia in the east, and the...Read More

Wu is a group of linguistically similar and historically related Sinitic languages spoken primarily in Shanghai, Zhejiang Province, the southern half of Jiangsu Province and surrounding areas. Major Wu varieties include those of Shanghai, Suzhou, Wuxi, Changzhou, Ningbo, Hangzhou, Shaoxing, Wenzhou, Jinhua and Yongkang. Wu speakers, such as Chiang Kai-shek, Lu Xun and Cai Yuanpei, occupied positions of great importance in modern Chinese culture and politics.

Telugu is a Dravidian language spoken by Telugu people predominantly living in the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, where it is also the official language. It stands alongside Hindi and Bengali as one of the few languages with primary official language status in more than one Indian...Read More

Marathi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken predominantly by around 83 million Marathi people of Maharashtra, India. It is the official language and co-official language in the Maharashtra and Goa states of Western India, respectively and is one of the 22 scheduled languages of India. With 83 million...Read More

Bengali, also known by its endonym Bangla, is an Indo-Aryan language and the lingua franca of the Bengal region of Indian subcontinent. It is the most widely spoken language of Bangladesh and the second most widely spoken of the 22 scheduled languages of India, after Hindi. With approximately 228...Read More

Russian (русский язык, tr. russkiy yazyk) is an East Slavic language native to the Russians in Eastern Europe. It is an official language in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and is used widely throughout the Caucasus, Central Asia, and to some extent in the Baltic states. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages, one of the four living members of the East Slavic languages alongside, and part of the larger Balto-Slavic branch.

Malay is an Austronesian language officially spoken in Indonesia, Brunei, Malaysia and Singapore and unofficially spoken in East Timor and parts of Thailand. A language of the Malays, it is spoken by 290 million people (around 260 million as Indonesian) across the Malay World.

Korean is an East Asian language spoken by about 77 million people. It is the official and national language of both Koreas: North Korea and South Korea, with different standardized official forms used in each country. It is a recognised minority language in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture and Changbai Korean Autonomous County of Jilin Province, China. It is also spoken in parts of Sakhalin, Russia and Central Asia.

French is a Romance language of the Indo-European family. It descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire, as did all Romance languages. French evolved from Gallo-Romance, the Latin spoken in Gaul, and more specifically in Northern Gaul. Its closest relatives are the other langues d’oïl—languages...Read More

Pashto, sometimes spelled Pukhto or Pakhto, is an Eastern Iranian language of the Indo-European family. It is known in Persian literature as Afghani . The language is natively spoken by Pashtuns (also called Pukhtuns/Pakhtuns; historically known as ethnic Afghans), an ethnic group of Afghanistan and...Read More

Tagalog is an Austronesian language spoken as a first language by the ethnic Tagalog people, who make up a quarter of the population of the Philippines, and as a second language by the majority. Its standardized form, officially named Filipino, is the national language of the Philippines, and is one of two official languages alongside English.

Punjabi (Gurmukhi, Shahmukhi) is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Punjabi people and native to the Punjab region of India and Pakistan. It has approximately 113 million native speakers. The larger part – 80.5 million as of 2017 – are in Pakistan, where Punjabi has more speakers than any other...Read More

The German language is a West Germanic language mainly spoken in Central Europe. It is the most widely spoken and official or co-official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and the Italian province of South Tyrol. It is also a co-official language of Luxembourg, Belgium and...Read More

Vietnamese is an Austroasiatic language that originated in Vietnam, where it is the national and official language. It is by far the most spoken Austroasiatic language with over 70 million native speakers, at least seven times more than Khmer, the next most spoken Austroasiatic language. Its vocabulary...Read More

Tamil is a Dravidian language natively spoken by the Tamil people of South Asia. Tamil is the official language of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, as well as two sovereign nations, Singapore and Sri Lanka. In India, it is also the official language of the Union Territory of Puducherry. Tamil is spoken...Read More

Gujarati is an Indo-Aryan language native to the Indian state of Gujarat and spoken predominantly by the Gujarati people. Gujarati is part of the greater Indo-European language family. Gujarati is descended from Old Gujarati (c. 1100–1500 CE). In India, it is the official language in the state...Read More

Malayalam is a Dravidian language spoken in the Indian state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry (Mahé district) by the Malayali people. It is one of 22 scheduled languages of India and is spoken by 2.88% of Indians. Malayalam has official language status in the state...Read More

Odia is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in the Indian state of Odisha. It is the official language in Odisha (formerly known as Orissa) where native speakers make up 82% of the population, also spoken in parts of West Bengal, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, Odia is one of the many official languages of India; it is the official language of Odisha and the second official language of Jharkhand. The language is also spoken by a sizeable population of at least 1 million people in Chhattisgarh.

Bhojpuri is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in northern-eastern India and the Terai region of Nepal. It is chiefly spoken in western Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh. Sociolinguistically, Bhojpuri is often considered one of several Hindi dialects. The language is a minority language in Fiji, Guyana, Mauritius, South Africa, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago.

Uzbek is a Turkic language that is the first official and only declared national language of Uzbekistan. The language of Uzbeks is spoken by some 27 million native speakers in Uzbekistan and elsewhere in Central Asia, making it the second-most widely spoken Turkic language after Turkish.

Fula, is a Senegambian language spoken as a set of various dialects in a continuum that stretches across some 20 countries in West and Central Africa by more than 65 million people. Along with other related languages such as Serer and Wolof, it belongs to the Senegambian branch within the Niger–Congo...Read More

Azerbaijani, also referred to as Azeri Turkish, is a Turkic language spoken primarily by the Azerbaijani people, who live mainly in the Republic of Azerbaijan where the North Azerbaijani variety is spoken, and in the Azerbaijan region of Iran, where the South Azerbaijani variety is spoken. Although there is a very high degree of mutual intelligibility between both forms of Azerbaijani, there are significant differences in phonology, lexicon, morphology, syntax and sources of loanwords.

Awadhi is an Eastern Hindi language of the Indo-Aryan branch spoken in northern India. It is primarily spoken in the Awadh region of present-day Uttar Pradesh, India. The name Awadh is connected to Ayodhya, the ancient town, which is regarded as the homeland of the Hindu god Rama. It was, along with Braj Bhasha, used widely as a literary vehicle before being displaced by Hindustani in the 19th century.

The Kurdish languages constitute a dialect continuum, belonging to the Iranian language family, spoken by Kurds in the geo-cultural region of Kurdistan and the Kurdish diaspora. The three Kurdish languages are Northern Kurdish (Kurmanji), Central Kurdish (Sorani), and Southern Kurdish (Xwarîn). A...Read More

Malagasy is an Austronesian language and the national language of Madagascar. Most people in Madagascar speak it as a first language, as do some people of Malagasy descent elsewhere. The Malagasy language is the westernmost member of the Malayo-Polynesian branch of the Austronesian language family,...Read More

Assamese, is an Indo-Aryan language spoken mainly in the northeast Indian state of Assam, where it is an official language. It is the easternmost Indo-European language, spoken by over 14 million speakers, and serves as lingua franca of the region. Nefamese is an Assamese-based pidgin used in Arunachal...Read More

Somali is an Afroasiatic language belonging to the Cushitic branch. It is spoken as a mother tongue by Somalis in Greater Somalia and the Somali diaspora. Somali is an official language of Somalia and Somaliland, a national language in Djibouti, and a working language in the Somali Region of Ethiopia...Read More

Marwari is a Rajasthani dialect spoken in the Indian state of Rajasthan. Marwari is also found in the neighbouring state of Gujarat and Haryana, Eastern Pakistan and some migrant communities in Nepal. With some 7.8 million or so speakers, it is one of the largest varieties of Rajasthani. Most speakers live in Rajasthan, with a quarter million in Sindh and a tenth that number in Nepal. There are two dozen dialects of Marwari.

The Magahi language, also known as Magadhi, is a language spoken in Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal states of eastern India. Magadhi Prakrit was the ancestor of Magahi, from which the latter’s name derives. It has a very rich and old tradition of folk songs and stories. It is spoken in nine...Read More

Haryanvi is a Central Indo-Aryan language or dialect spoken in Haryana, India. It is also spoken in metropolitan cities like Delhi and Kolkata to a lesser extent. Haryanvi is considered to be a Western Hindi dialect, like Khariboli and Braj and it is written in Devanagari script.

Berar-Deccan Marathi, is a possible language of the Marathi–Konkani group, or perhaps just a regional dialect of Marathi. Glottolog reports that it is closely related to Varhadi-Nagpuri. (Sub)dialects are Bijapuri (of Bijapur district, Karnataka) and Kalvadi (of Dharwad district). These have been...Read More

Kazakh, or Qazaq, is a Turkic language of the Kipchak branch spoken in Central Asia. It is closely related to Nogai, Kyrgyz and Karakalpak. Kazakh is the official language of Kazakhstan and a significant minority language in the Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture in Xinjiang, China and in the Bayan-Ölgii Province of Mongolia. Kazakh is also spoken by many ethnic Kazakhs through the former Soviet Union (some 472,000 in Russia according to the 2010 Russian Census), Germany, Turkey.

Balochi is a Northwestern Iranian language spoken primarily in the Balochistan region divided between Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan. It is spoken by 3 to 5 million people. In addition to Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan, it is also spoken in Oman, the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, Turkmenistan, East Africa and in diaspora communities in other parts of the world.

Yue is a group of similar Sinitic languages spoken in Southern China, particularly in Liangguang (the Guangdong and Guangxi provinces). The name Cantonese is often used for the whole group, but linguists prefer to reserve that name for the variety used in Guangzhou (Canton), Wuzhou (Ngchow), Hong...Read More

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, native to Greece, Cyprus, Albania, other parts of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea. It has the longest documented history of any living Indo-European language, spanning at least 3,400 years of written records. Its...Read More

Kinyarwanda is an official language of Rwanda and a dialect of the Rwanda-Rundi language spoken by at least 10 million people in Rwanda, Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo and adjacent parts of southern Uganda where it is known as Rufumbira. The mutually intelligible Kirundi dialect is the official language of neighbouring Burundi. Kinyabwisha and Kinyamulenge are the mutually intelligible dialects spoken in North Kivu and South Kivu provinces of neighbouring DR Congo.

Javanese, is the language of the Javanese people from the central and eastern parts of the island of Java, in Indonesia. There are also pockets of Javanese speakers on the northern coast of western Java. It is the native language of more than 98 million people (more than 42% of the total population of Indonesia). Javanese is the largest of the Austronesian languages in number of native speakers. It has several regional dialects and a number of clearly distinct status styles.

Turkish, also referred to as Istanbul Turkish (İstanbul Türkçesi) or Turkey Turkish (Türkiye Türkçesi), is the most widely spoken of the Turkic languages, with around 70 to 80 million speakers, the national language of Turkey. Outside its native country, significant smaller groups of speakers...Read More

Italian is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family. Italian is, by most measures and together with Sardinian, the closest language to Latin, from which it descends via Vulgar Latin. Italian is an official language in Italy, Switzerland (Ticino and the Grisons), San Marino, and Vatican...Read More

Thai, Central Thai, is the national language of Thailand and de facto official language; it is the first language of the Central Thai people and most Thai Chinese, depending on age. It is a member of the Tai group of the Kra–Dai language family, and one of over 60 languages of Thailand. Over half of Thai vocabulary is derived from or borrowed from Pali, Sanskrit, Mon and Old Khmer. It is a tonal and analytic language, similar to Chinese and Vietnamese.

Jin is a group of Chinese dialects or languages spoken by roughly 63 million people in northern China. Its geographical distribution covers most of Shanxi province except for the lower Fen River valley, much of central Inner Mongolia and adjoining areas in Hebei, Henan, and Shaanxi provinces. The status of Jin is disputed among linguists; some prefer to classify it as a dialect of Mandarin, but others set it apart as a closely related, but separate sister-language to Mandarin.

Southern Min, Minnan or Banlam, is a group of linguistically similar and historically related Sinitic languages that form a branch of Min Chinese spoken in Fujian (especially the Minnan region), most of Taiwan (many citizens are descendants of settlers from Fujian), Eastern Guangdong, Hainan and Southern...Read More

Persian, is a Western Iranian language belonging to the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian subdivision of the Indo-European languages. Persian is a pluricentric language predominantly spoken and used officially within Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan in three mutually intelligible standard varieties,...Read More

Polish is a West Slavic language of the Lechitic group. It is spoken primarily in Poland and serves as the native language of the Poles. In addition to being the official language of Poland, it is also used by Polish minorities in other countries. There are over 50 million Polish speakers around the world – it is the sixth-most-spoken language of the European Union.

Kannada is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by the people of Karnataka in the southwestern region of India. The language is also spoken by linguistic minorities in the states of Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Kerala and Goa; and also by Kannadigas abroad. The language...Read More

Xiang or Hsiang, is a group of linguistically similar and historically related Sinitic languages, spoken mainly in Hunan province but also in northern Guangxi and parts of neighboring Guizhou and Hubei provinces. Scholars divided Xiang into five subgroups, Chang-Yi, Lou-Shao, Hengzhou, Chen-Xu and...Read More

Sundanese is a Malayo-Polynesian language spoken by the Sundanese. It has approximately 39 million native speakers in the western third of Java; they represent about 15% of Indonesia’s total population. According to American linguist Robert Blust, Sundanese is closely related to the Malayic...Read More

Hausa is a Chadic language spoken by the Hausa people, mainly within the territories of Niger and the northern half of Nigeria, and with significant minorities in Chad, Ghana, and Cameroon. Hausa is a member of the Afroasiatic language family and is the most widely spoken language within the Chadic...Read More

Burmese is a Sino-Tibetan language spoken in Myanmar where it is an official language and the language of the Bamar people, the country’s principal ethnic group. Although the Constitution of Myanmar officially recognizes the English name of the language as the Myanmar language, most English...Read More

Hakka is a language group of varieties of Chinese, spoken natively by the Hakka people throughout Southern China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau and throughout the diaspora areas of East Asia, Southeast Asia and in overseas Chinese communities around the world. Due to its primary usage in scattered isolated...Read More

Ukrainian, historically also Ruthenian is an East Slavic language. It is the official state language of Ukraine and one of the three official languages in the unrecognized state of Transnistria, the other two being Moldovan and Russian. Written Ukrainian uses a variant of the Cyrillic script (see Ukrainian alphabet).

Yoruba is a language spoken in West Africa, most prominently Southwestern Nigeria. It is spoken by the ethnic Yoruba people. The number of Yoruba speakers is estimated at between 45 and 55 million. As a pluricentric language, it is primarily spoken in a dialectal area spanning Nigeria, Benin and Togo, with smaller migrated communities in Cote d’Ivoire, Sierra Leone and The Gambia.

Maithili is an Indo-Aryan language native to the Indian subcontinent, mainly spoken in India and Nepal. In India, it is spoken in the states of Bihar and Jharkhand and is one of the 22 recognised Indian languages. In Nepal, it is spoken in the eastern Terai and is the second most prevalent language of Nepal. Tirhuta was formerly the primary script for written Maithili. Less commonly, it was also written in the local variant of Kaithi. Today it is written in the Devanagari script.

Sindhi is an Indo-Aryan language of the historical Sindh region in the western part of the Indian subcontinent, spoken by the Sindhi people. It is the official language of the Pakistani province of Sindh. In India, Sindhi is one of the scheduled languages officially recognized by the central government,...Read More

Amharic is an Ethiopian Semitic language, which is a subgrouping within the Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic languages. It is spoken as a first language by the Amharas and as a lingua franca by other populations residing in major cities and towns of Ethiopia. The Amharic language possibly originated...Read More

Romanian is a Balkan Romance language spoken by approximately 24–26 million people as a native language, primarily in Romania and Moldova, and by another 4 million people as a second language. According to another estimate, there are about 34 million people worldwide who can speak Romanian, of whom 30 million speak it as a native language. It is an official and national language of both Romania and Moldova and is one of the official languages of the European Union.

Oromo is an Afroasiatic language that belongs to the Cushitic branch. It is native to the Ethiopian state of Oromia and spoken predominantly by the Oromo people and neighbouring ethnic groups in the Horn of Africa. With 33.8% Oromo speakers, followed by 29.3% Amharic speakers, Oromo is the most widely...Read More

Igbo is the principal native language of the Igbo people, an ethnic group of southeastern Nigeria. A standard literary language was developed in 1972 based on the Owerri (Isuama) and Umuahia (such as Ohuhu) dialects, though it omits the nasalization and aspiration of those varieties.[citation needed] Related Igboid languages such as Ika, Ukwuani and Ogba are dialects of Igbo. Igbo is recognized as a major language in Nigeria, a minority in Equatorial Guinea and Cameroon.

Gan, Gann or Kan is a group of Sinitic languages spoken natively by many people in the Jiangxi province of China, as well as significant populations in surrounding regions such as Hunan, Hubei, Anhui, and Fujian. Gan is a member of the Sinitic languages of the Sino-Tibetan language family, and Hakka is the closest Chinese variety to Gan in terms of phonetics. Different dialects of Gan exist; the Nanchang dialect is usually taken as representative.

Cebuano, also referred to by most of its speakers as Bisaya or Binisaya (translated into English as Visayan, though this should not be confused with other Bisayan languages), is an Austronesian language, spoken in the southern Philippines. Specifically, it flourishes in Central Visayas, western parts...Read More

Dutch (Nederlands) is a West Germanic language spoken by about 24 million people as a first language and 5 million people as a second language, constituting the majority of people in the Netherlands (where it is the only official language countrywide) and Belgium (as one of three official languages). It is the third most widely spoken Germanic language, after its close relatives English and German.

Serbo-Croatian also called Serbo-Croat, Serbo-Croat-Bosnian (SCB), Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian (BCS), and Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS) is a South Slavic language and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro. It is a pluricentric language with four mutually intelligible standard varieties, namely Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin.

Saraiki is an Indo-Aryan language of the Lahnda group, spoken in the south-western half of the province of Punjab in Pakistan. It was previously known as Multani, after its main dialect. Saraiki is to a high degree mutually intelligible with Standard Punjabi and shares with it a large portion of its...Read More

Nepali is an Indo-Aryan language of the sub-branch of Eastern Pahari. It is the official language of Nepal and one of the 22 scheduled languages of India. Also known by the endonym Khas kura (Devanagari: खस कुरा), the language is also called Gorkhali or Parbatiya in some contexts. It is...Read More

Sinhala, also known as Sinhalese, is an Indo-Aryan language primarily spoken by the Buddhist peoples of Sri Lanka, who make up the largest ethnic group on the island, numbering about 16 million. Sinhala is also spoken as the first language by other ethnic groups in Sri Lanka, totalling about 4 million people as of 2001. Sinhala is written using the Sinhala script, which is one of the Brahmic scripts, a descendant of the ancient Indian Brahmi script closely related to the Kadamba script.

Chittagonian, also known by its endonym Chatgaya is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in the Chittagong Division in Bangladesh. It is generally considered to be a nonstandard dialect of Bengali because its speakers identify with Bengali culture and Standard Bengali as literary language, but the two are not mutually intelligible. It is estimated (2009) that Chittagonian has 13–16 million speakers, principally in Bangladesh.

The Zhuang languages are any of more than a dozen Tai languages spoken by the Zhuang people of Southern China in the province of Guangxi and adjacent parts of Yunnan and Guangdong. The Zhuang languages do not form a monophyletic linguistic unit, as northern and southern Zhuang languages are more closely...Read More

Khmer is the language of the Khmer people and the official language of Cambodia. With approximately 16 million speakers, it is the second most widely spoken Austroasiatic language (after Vietnamese). Khmer has been influenced considerably by Sanskrit and Pali, especially in the royal and religious...Read More

Turkmen, also referred to as Turkmen Turkic or Turkmen Turkish, is a Turkic language spoken by the Turkmens of Central Asia, mainly of Turkmenistan, Iran and Afghanistan. It has an estimated five million native speakers in Turkmenistan, a further 719,000 speakers in Northeastern Iran and 1.5 million...Read More

Madurese is a language of the Madurese people of Madura Island and Eastern Java, Indonesia; it is also spoken on the neighbouring small Kangean Islands and Sapudi Islands, as well as by migrants to other parts of Indonesia, namely the eastern salient of Java (comprising Pasuruan, Surabaya, Malang...Read More

Hungarian (magyar nyelv) is a Uralic language spoken in Hungary and parts of several neighbouring countries. It is the official language of Hungary and one of the 24 official languages of the European Union. Outside Hungary, it is also spoken by communities of Hungarians in present-day Slovakia, western Ukraine (Subcarpathia), central and western Romania (Transylvania), northern Serbia (Vojvodina), northern Croatia, northeastern Slovenia (Mur region) and eastern Austria.

Chhattisgarhi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by 18 million people in the Indian state of Chhattisgarh. Chhattisgarhi has been known by the name Khaltahi to surrounding hill-people and by the name Loriya to speakers in neighboring regions of Odisha. The speakers are concentrated in the Indian state...Read More

Chewa (also known as Nyanja ) is a Bantu language spoken in much of Southern, Southeast and East Africa, namely the countries of Malawi and Zambia, where it is an official language, and Mozambique and Zimbabwe where it is a recognised minority language. The noun class prefix chi- is used for languages,...Read More

Akan is a Central Tano language and the principal native language of the Akan people of Ghana, spoken over much of the southern half of Ghana. About 80% of Ghana’s population can speak Akan, about 44% of Ghanaians are native speakers. It is also spoken in parts of Côte d’Ivoire. Four...Read More

Northern Min, is a group of mutually intelligible Min varieties spoken in Nanping prefecture of northwestern Fujian. Early classifications of varieties of Chinese, such as those of Li Fang-Kuei in 1937 and Yuan Jiahua in 1960, divided Min into Northern and Southern subgroups. However, in a 1963 report...Read More

Sylheti is an Eastern Indo-Aryan language spoken by an estimated 11 million people, primarily in the Sylhet Division of Bangladesh, the Barak Valley and the Hojai district of Assam as well as in northern parts of Tripura in India. Outside of these regions, there are substantial numbers of Sylheti speakers in Meghalaya, Manipur and Nagaland; as well as diaspora communities in the United Kingdom, the United States, and the Middle East.

Zulu or isiZulu as an endonym, is a Southern Bantu language of the Nguni branch spoken in Southern Africa. It is the language of the Zulu people, with about 12 million native speakers, who primarily inhabit the province of KwaZulu-Natal of South Africa. Zulu is the most widely spoken home language in South Africa (24% of the population), and it is understood by over 50% of its population. It became one of South Africa’s 11 official languages in 1994.

Czech, is a West Slavic language of the Czech–Slovak group. Spoken by over 13 million people, it serves as the official language of the Czech Republic (Czechia). Czech is closely related to Slovak, to the point of high mutual intelligibility, as well as Polish to a lesser degree. Like other Slavic languages, Czech is a fusional language with a rich system of morphology and relatively flexible word order. Its vocabulary has been extensively influenced by Latin and German.

Dhundhari (also known as Jaipuri) is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in the Dhundhar region of northeastern Rajasthan state, India. Dhundari-speaking people are found in four districts – Jaipur, Sawai Madhopur, Dausa, and Tonk. With some 1.5 million speakers, it is not the largest speaking language...Read More

Haitian Creole, commonly referred to as simply Creole, is a French-based creole language spoken by 10–12 million people worldwide, and is one of the two official languages of Haiti, where it is the native language of a majority of the population. The language emerged from contact between French...Read More

Eastern Min or Min Dong, is a branch of the Min group of Sinitic languages of China. The prestige form and most-cited representative form is the Fuzhou dialect, the speech of the capital and largest city of Fujian. Eastern Min varieties are mainly spoken in the eastern part of Fujian Province of the...Read More

Ilocano is an Austronesian language spoken in the Philippines. It is the third most-spoken native language in the country. As an Austronesian language, it is related to Malay (Indonesian and Malaysian), Tetum, Chamorro, Fijian, Maori, Hawaiian, Samoan, Tahitian, Paiwan and Malagasy. It is closely related to some of the other Austronesian languages of Northern Luzon, and has slight mutual intelligibility with the Balangao language and the eastern dialects of the Bontoc language.

Quechua, usually called Runasimi (“people’s language”) in Quechuan languages, is an indigenous language family spoken by the Quechua peoples, primarily living in the Peruvian Andes. Derived from a common ancestral language, it is the most widely spoken pre-Columbian language family...Read More

Kirundi, also known as Rundi, is a Bantu language spoken by 9 million people in Burundi and adjacent parts of Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as well as in Uganda. It is the official language of Burundi. Kirundi is mutually intelligible with Kinyarwanda, an official language of Rwanda, and the two form part of the wider dialect continuum known as Rwanda-Rundi.

Swedish is a North Germanic language spoken natively by 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden (as the sole official language) and in parts of Finland, where it has equal legal standing with Finnish. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish, although the degree of mutual intelligibility...Read More

Hmong / Mong, known as Miao in China, is a dialect continuum of the West Hmongic branch of the Hmongic languages spoken by the Hmong of Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangxi, Hainan, northern Vietnam, Thailand, and Laos. There are some 2.7 million speakers of varieties that are largely mutually intelligible,...Read More

Shona (chiShona) is a Bantu language of the Shona people of Zimbabwe. It is one of the most widely spoken Bantu languages. According to Ethnologue, Shona, comprising the Karanga, Zezuru and Korekore dialects, is spoken by about 10.8 million people. The Manyika and Ndau dialects of Shona are listed...Read More

The Uyghur or Uighur language, is a Turkic language, written in a Uyghur Perso-Arabic script, with 10 to 15 million speakers, spoken primarily by the Uyghur people in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of Western China. Significant communities of Uyghur speakers are located in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan...Read More

Hiligaynon, also often referred colloquially simply as Ilonggo, is an Austronesian regional language spoken in the Philippines by about 9.1 million people, mainly in Western Visayas and Soccsksargen, most of whom belong to the Hiligaynon people. It is the second-most widely spoken language in the Visayas and belongs to the Bisayan languages, and is more distantly related to other Philippine languages.

The Mossi language is a Gur language of the Oti–Volta branch and one of two official regional languages of Burkina Faso, closely related to the Frafra language spoken just across the border in the northern half of Ghana and less-closely to Dagbani and Mampruli farther south. It is the language of the Mossi people, spoken by approximately 5 million people in Burkina Faso, plus another 60,000+ in Mali and Togo.

Xhosa also isiXhosa as an endonym, is a Nguni Bantu language and one of the official languages of South Africa and Zimbabwe. Xhosa is spoken as a first language by approximately 8.2 million people and by another 11 million as a second language in South Africa, mostly in Eastern Cape, Western Cape,...Read More

Belarusian is an East Slavic language spoken by the Belarusians. It is one of the two official languages in the Republic of Belarus under the current Constitution (Article 17), along with Russian. Additionally, it is spoken in some parts of Russia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, and Ukraine by Belarusian...Read More

Konkani is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Konkani people, primarily along the western coastal region (Konkan) of India. It is one of the 22 Scheduled languages mentioned in the 8th schedule of the Indian Constitution and the official language of the Indian state of Goa. The first Konkani inscription is dated 1187 A.D. It is a minority language in Karnataka, Maharashtra, Kerala, Gujarat and Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu.