Talk:List of languages by number of native speakers

This article is subject to repeated attempts at promoting particular languages. If you have a reliable source which disagrees with the numbers here, you can add it to "Other estimates". However, for the list as a whole we need a single source that covers all of these languages simultaneously; anything else would be inconsistent and lead to gaming the system. Unfortunately, there are not many good options to choose from.

This article was nominated for deletion on 5 January 2010. The result of the discussion was keep.

Languages Low‑importance

	Language portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Languages, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of languages on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.LanguagesWikipedia:WikiProject LanguagesTemplate:WikiProject Languageslanguage
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Lists Low‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Lists, an attempt to structure and organize all list pages on Wikipedia. If you wish to help, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.ListsWikipedia:WikiProject ListsTemplate:WikiProject ListsList
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Archives

Index

Archive 1	Archive 2	Archive 3
Archive 4	Archive 5	Archive 6
Archive 7	Archive 8	Archive 9
Archive 10	Archive 11	Archive 12

This page has archives. Sections older than 90 days may be automatically archived by when more than 5 sections are present.

Punjabi

Why are West Punjabi and East Punjabi written separately? It's a united, mutually intelligible language with two scripts, so it should be just Punjabi. HHislegend (talk) 04:14, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

We follow the source. a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 09:11, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Swahili????

Swahili has more than 100m native speakers; are you people on Cocaine??? Even Native speakers of English is underestimated severely 185.237.102.83 (talk) 20:13, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm wondering about Swahili too. DrGoldin (talk) 12:12, 25 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Swahili is mainly used as a lingua franca, even though it may have a lot of L2 speakers the case is not the same with native speakers. Dvorakuser1 (talk) 02:51, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Semi-protected edit request on 3 January 2025

This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

In the list of languages based on percent of native speakers. Arabic is meant to be 4 not 3. The number was doubletyped. Change 3 to 4 105.116.9.77 (talk) 10:40, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Done. The source has the approximate figure 5.1% for both English and Arabic, which an editor has interpreted as a tie. It is very unlikely that the actual situation is a tie. The ordinals are not in the source, which places English before Arabic, so if we are going to supply ordinals while respecting the source, Arabic should indeed be 4. Kanguole 10:52, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Semi-protected edit request on 18 January 2025

This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

Add xofrd commas. 2603:8000:4003:7423:C439:A84:88E4:F6CE (talk) 05:07, 18 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Done Kovcszaln6 (talk) 16:29, 18 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

German as Standard German

German is treated as seperate languages eventhough spanish, english and especially korean are treated as the same language. German within Germany, Austria and parts of Switzerland is not more distinct than different versions of spanish around the world. 2A0A:2782:3E9:4D00:1CCF:A2B2:7E70:A3F8 (talk) 14:34, 23 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]