What are the top 200 most spoken languages?
The Ethnologue 200
For over 15 years, we've published a list of the largest languages in the world – often cited by top-tier publications. Chances are, if you've seen a website or blog listing the "largest" or "most spoken" languages, it was from one iteration or another of our list.
The Ethnologue 200 accounts for most of the world's population. Over 88% of people use one of these languages as their native tongue, and many hundreds of millions more use them as second languages. This ranking accounts for both, showing the total usage worldwide.
Search the 2025 list below, or purchase the full list as a downloadable file.
Note: This list ranks individual languages, not macrolanguages (groupings of related but distinct language varieties). This approach is not intended to promote or diminish any language or group, but simply reflects a consistent method for reporting individual languages. If macrolanguages were included, entries like Chinese and Arabic would each encompass multiple distinct languages, changing the structure of the list considerably.
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About Ethnologue Ethnologue is the research center for language intelligence. We help you identify languages, find where they’re used, get population estimates, and more. See Features »