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For example, English has about 450 million native speakers but, depending on the criterion chosen, can be said to have as many as two billion speakers. [2] There are also difficulties in obtaining reliable counts of speakers, which vary over time because of population change and language shift.
The European Union is a supranational union composed of 27 member states. The total English-speaking population of the European Union and the United Kingdom combined (2012) is 256,876,220 [69] (out of a total population of 500,000,000, [70] i.e. 51%) including 65,478,252 native speakers and 191,397,968 non-native speakers, and would be ranked 2nd if it were included.
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.
The English-speaking world comprises the 88 countries and territories in which English is an official, administrative, or cultural language. In the early 2000s, between one and two billion people spoke English, [1] [2] making it the largest language by number of speakers, the third largest language by number of native speakers and the most widespread language geographically.
This influence of English has led to concerns about language death, [147] and to claims of linguistic imperialism, [148] and has provoked resistance to the spread of English; however the number of speakers continues to increase because many people around the world think that English provides them with opportunities for better employment and ...
Number of living languages Number of speakers Established Immigrant Total Percent [note 1] Total Mean Median Papua New Guinea: 840 0 840 11.81 4,213,381 5,040 1,315 Indonesia: 707 2 709 9.98 222,191,197 315,165 3,500 Nigeria: 525 7 532 7.37 163,317,444 348,225 14,000 India: 453 6 459 ? 1,257,421,714 2,924,237 35,000 China (mainland only) 302 3 305
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Languages by number of native speakers. The following table compares the estimates of Comrie (1998) and Weber (1997) [1] (number of native speakers in millions). Also given are the estimates of SIL Ethnologue (2005).