List languages per full number of speakers

Here a list of the natural languages classified according to the number of speakers of native tongue .

Warning on the data

This classification is evaluated by adding the speakers of each Pays. These data are provided only as an indication, no precise census not having never been carried out on the scale of planet, and the method evaluation used not having been communicated: our primary source, ethnologue.com , comprise many errors obviously. In any case, the maternal Langue is defined in different ways in each method of enumeration; some privilege the first learned language, others the primary language of use. Moreover, the distinction between language and Dialecte can largely vary the estimates.

The only certainty which one can have as for this classification is the first place, returning to the Chinese Mandarin. All the other places are more or less relating to the census method used (distinction FLM/FLS for example), or to the obsolescence of this method or of the date of census. Difference between language second and second language, which did not sit yet well today in the scientific discipline because it does not have the same importance according to the history of the country, is quite simply ignored by international SIL . Their figures go back indeed to a time when one employed in the United States only the concept of second language = language learned in second (simpler of use but making null and void the classification today below), and where the concept of language second = most important for the speaker had already sat in France, for historical reasons (birth of FLS in the colonies).

The most spoken languages and the most diffused languages: comparisons and differences

Among the principal great international languages listed below, it should be noted that only two of them have the characteristic to be studied and present on the five continents: the English and the French, which is in addition the two most diffused languages. English and French are the two only official languages of work of the majority of the international organizations (UNO, UNESCO, FAI, the ILO, NATO, CIO, ICRC, etc)

Bonds

http://www.20mars.francophonie.org
http://www.tlfq.ulaval.ca/axl/francophonie/francophonie.htm
http://www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/dglf/politique-langue/franco-chiffre-2000.html
http://www.francophonie.org/
http://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/fr/actions-france_830/francophonie-langue-francaise_1040/francophonie_3026/index.html

Sources

Independent source: Summer Institute off Linguistics by the means of the encyclopedia Inserted in line (consulted on June 3rd, 2005).
contradictory but sometimes old Source: www.ethnologue.com

Random links: