Talk:List of languages by number of native speakers

numbers Persian vs. Turkish

Everyone in Iran speaks Persian fluently. I am ethnically Azeri from Iran and I'd argue that most speak it even better than their supposed "native tongue" because it is the only language of education and many also prefer to use it in daily life. What is weird about that article is that for Turkish this differentiation wasn't done, and all Kurds, Laz, Zaza, etc. in Turkey were lumped together with the ethnic Turks, otherwise the number which is stated (84 million) makes no sense because there are by far not even 84 million Turks in the world. Why?

Furthermore it makes absolutely no sense that is was separately listed as "Iranian Persian" since all Persian variants are fully mutually intelligible. They are not separate languages. Only major difference is that in Tajikistan another script is used. In Iran and Afghanistan orthography, etc. is exactly the same. But still, even if an Iranian and a Tajik meet who were never exposed to each others dialects, everybody would understand each other with absolutely no problem. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 149.233.35.210 (talk) 23:51, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Persian Language

there are 80 Million Persian native speaker in Iran that persian is their mother language and there are 38 Million Afghan people that at least 50% of them speak Persian. i think persian language should be placed after Japanese. could you please tell me Which information source did you use? Mehdi Damshenas (talk) 14:08, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

The sources are given in the article. Kanguole 14:12, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

Sure that all of the 80 million inhabitants of Iran have Persian as their mother tongue? I think only about half of the population speaks Persian at home, the other speak languages like Aseri, Kurdish, Arabic and so forth as their native language. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A04:9740:97:3200:B85C:6A03:24AC:A70E (talk) 08:13, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Everyone in Iran speaks Persian fluently. I am ethnically Azeri from Iran and I'd argue that most speak it even better than their supposed "native tongue" because it is the only language of education and many prefer to use it also in daily life. What is weird about that article is that for Turkish this differentiation wasn't done, and all Kurds, Laz, Zaza, etc. were lumped together with the ethnic Turks, otherwise the number which is stated (84 million) makes no sense because there are by far not even 84 million Turks in the world. Why? Furthermore it makes absolutely no sense that is was separately listed as "Iranian Persian" since all Persian variants are fully mutually intelligible, the only difference is that in Tajikistan another script is used. In Iran and Afghanistan orthography, etc. is exactly the same. But stil, even if an Iranian and a Tajik meet who were never exposed to each others dialects, everybody would understand each other with absolutely no problem. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 149.233.35.210 (talk) 23:47, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Bahasa?

Bahasa seems to be ignored with <>300 million native speakers. Rustygecko (talk) 16:28, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

There are 300 million speakers, but Ethnologue says 42.8 million of these are native speakers. Kanguole 17:27, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

!

Having lived in Indonesia, and knowing the country well and Malaysia where they also speak the same language, this shocks me.

I think what you are referring to is there could be 42 million that speak exclusively bahasa Indonesia, but they all speak bahasa as their native language. Rustygecko (talk) 23:38, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

To say it’s not their first language is like saying someone from the Basque Country in Spain or a Catalan in Spain are not native speakers of Castilian Spanish - they grow up speaking both languages. The same with bahasa - they speak it at home and here it from the day they’re born. Rustygecko (talk) 23:47, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

There are 77 million speakers of bahasa Malaysia. You are obviously not counting those as native speakers.

do you therefore not count quebecois as not speaking French (bahasa Malaysia and bahasa Indonesia are much closer than quebecois and French) NB I speak French fluently. Following the same logic American English and British English, Scots English and Irish English and Australian English should be classified as separate languages. Rustygecko (talk) 00:01, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

This reflects the reality:

“ The number of Indonesian native speakers of the Indonesian language is generally underestimated. An extreme case is Ethnologue which until recently maintained that the Indonesian language has 23 million native speakers. The prevailing picture is that the vast majority of Indonesians speak a regional language as their mother tongue and begin to learn Indonesian when they go to school. As the result of the relative late exposure to the national language, most Indonesians cannot be considered as native speakers of bahasa Indonesia.

In this paper it will be argued that the above-mentioned scenario may have been true in post-independence Indonesia and probably up into the 1980ies, but does no longer reflect the linguistic reality of Indonesia in the 21st century. Today Indonesian is universally understood, even in the most remote parts of Indonesia, and the majority of Indonesians grow up bilingually. While many Indonesians still continue to speak regional languages within their families, they typically switch to Indonesian as soon as the discussion extends beyond familiar topics.” Rustygecko (talk) 00:04, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

We have to rely on the sources. As the article notes in the introduction, criteria for delimiting languages and counting speakers vary widely, so each of the lists here is cited to a single source, to ensure consistent criteria. So any change to this list awaits a change in Ethnologue. Kanguole 09:57, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

Hi @Rustygecko,

If you go to List of languages by total number of speakers, you'll see that Indonesian is listed there with 199.0 million of speakers.

Regarding native languages, Wikipedia uses two sources: Ethnologue and the CIA World Factbook. None of them mention Bahasa among the most spoken native languages. For consistency, we don't modify individual counts: we keep the ranking of each source as it is.

Please also note that, according to the ISO 639-3 standard, the Indonesian language (code: ind) and Malaysian Malay (code: zsm) are two different languages part of the Malay macrolanguage (code: msa). Wikipedia doesn't make the rules and isn't related to the organization that maintains that classification.

According to Ethnologue there are 82 million native speakers of the Malay macrolanguage (msa). You can see the details here.

So if you think the count for Bahasa is incorrect then please join Ethnologue's Contributor program and submit your feedback. a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 11:37, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

Also, please note that Ethnologue acknowledges that: local or vernacular Malay varieties [are] not well differentiated from each other, and [...] further research is needed to clarify differentiation from mainstream dialects. a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 11:41, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

Thank you. I have joined their program, but frankly if you are going to classify Bahasa Indonesia and Bahasa Malayu as different languages the British and American English should go the same route, and Scottish English definitely counts as another language. Equally Spanish, Mexican, Ecuador Ian should also not be the same languages. Thanks again. Rustygecko (talk) 19:58, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia follows what "experts" say. And sometimes "experts" are wrong unfortunately... a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 20:12, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 9 September 2023

There is a typo in the first sentence; they likely meant to write “ranked,” not “raked.” 166.198.34.57 (talk) 18:31, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

Fixed, thanks. Kanguole 19:03, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

Kannada is not yet ranked even wiki itself marked 60+ millions of speakers

Even Wiki page itself marks kannada speaking numbers are more than 60 million, kannada is not listed in the rank table in the page we are talking about. ಹಂಸರವಿನಿತ್ಯಾ (talk) 19:47, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not considered a reliable source. This article builds on Ethnologue. If you think Ethnologue is incorrect, I agree with you - but the consensus is to use it as the source for this article. Jeppiz (talk) 20:00, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

THIS ARTICLE IS NONSENSE : FRENCH SHOULD BE IN THE TOP 5 AND IS NOT EVEN LISTED HERE

https://www.berlitz.com/blog/most-spoken-languages-world

https://www.berlitz.com/blog/french-speaking-countries

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 2607:fa49:ce40:8d00:10af:8a10:ea09:916c (talk • contribs) 12:15, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

Even according to this source, French has "First language speakers: 79.9 million", which is less than several of the other languages listed, and some not listed. For comparisons of total speakers, see List of languages by total number of speakers. Kanguole 12:52, 9 April 2024 (UTC)