| Position | Language | Family | Script | Speakers (Millions) |
| 1 | Mandarin | Sino-Tibetan | Chinese | 900 |
| 2 | English | Indo-European | Latin | 430 |
| 3 | Hindi | Indo-European | Devanagari | 320 |
| 4 | Spanish | Indo-European | Latin | 310 |
| 5 | Russian | Indo-European | Cyrillic | 280 |
| 6 | Arabic | Afro-Asiatic | Arabic | 185 |
| 7 | Bengali | Indo-European | Bengali | 180 |
| 8 | Portuguese | Indo-European | Latin | 175 |
| 9 | Malay / Indonesian | Malayo-Polynesian | Latin | 140 |
| 10 | Japanese | Altaic | Chinese / Japanese | 125 |
| 11 | German | Indo-European | Latin | 120 |
| 12 | French | Indo-European | Latin | 115 |
| 13 | Urdu | Indo-European | Nastaliq | 88 |
| 14 | Punjabi | Indo-European | Gurumukha | 75 |
| 15 | Korean | Altaic | Hangul | 68 |
| 16 | Telegu | Dravidian | Telegu | 64 |
| 17 | Italian | Indo-European | Latin | 63 |
| 18 | Tamil | Dravidian | Tamil | 62 |
| 19 | Marathi | Indo-European | Devanagari | 61 |
| 20 | Cantonese | Sino-Tibetan | Chinese | 60 |
© 1997, 2000 Kryss Katsiavriades
Language Families
An introduction to Language Families.
| Click on the ISBN Number to go straight to the book. | COM |
Co UK |
| Atlas of the World's Languages is the reference book on languages. Over 4000 languages are covered, some with very few speakers. |
|
|
