Languages of the world
Languages ranked by how many people can hold a conversation in them, first or second language.
Data as of 28 Oct 2026 · 831 languages · CLDR 49, Glottolog 5.3, States sheet
Languages with a figure
831
Families
63
Countries
254
States with a first language
3,483
New: language power, ranked by the metro power each language reaches →
Languages by speakers
People who can hold a conversation in each language, largest first.
How this is measured
CLDR gives each country's share who speak a language, first or second. Speakers is that share times country population, summed over countries. Bilinguals count in every language they speak, so rows overlap.
Families
Language families by combined speakers, largest first.
How this is measured
Family totals add up their languages' speakers, so a bilingual counts in each family they speak and totals overlap.
Family board
Where these numbers come from
- Unicode CLDR territoryInfo (release 49) (Unicode License v3). Country-level language shares, official status and Tier 3 reach (populationPercent is total speakers, first plus second language).
- Glottolog 5.3 (CC BY 4.0). Language names, ISO 639-3 codes, families.
- Database of International and Intranational Linguistic distances (DICL v2), USITC (CC BY 4.0). Country-pair linguistic proximity (loaded, not yet shown in release one).
- States (ISO 3166-2) sheet, MetroAreas workbook (Citizen of Nowhere, own compilation). States, populations and the four language labels per state.
- Natural Earth 1:110m Admin 0 Countries (nvkelso/natural-earth-vector) (Public domain). World outline for the language maps (world-110m.geojson, properties reduced to iso3 and name).
- Country layer of this site (countries.json workbook population, World Bank iso2 and iso3, OWID country-population) (Citizen of Nowhere, own compilation; World Bank CC BY 4.0; OWID CC BY). Country population, iso2 and /countries slug joined onto languages, countries and families (speakers = share x population).
Definitions and limits are on the Method page.