List of languages by number of native speakers

All such rankings of human languages ranked by their number of native speakers should be used with caution, because it is not possible to devise a coherent set of linguistic criteria for distinguishing languages in a dialect continuum.

[2] Conversely, many commonly accepted languages, including German, Italian, and English, encompass varieties that are not mutually intelligible.

[5] There are also difficulties in obtaining reliable counts of speakers, which vary over time because of population change and language shift.

[6] The following languages are listed as having at least 50 million first-language speakers in the 27th edition of Ethnologue published in 2024.

[7] This section does not include entries that Ethnologue identifies as macrolanguages encompassing all their respective varieties, such as Arabic, Lahnda, Persian, Malay, Pashto, and Chinese.