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Five Languages with the Most Total Speakers by Continent

For each continent, can you name the five languages with the most total speakers?
Quiz by Quizzer6794
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Last updated: February 3, 2020
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First submittedJanuary 10, 2017
Times taken14,780
Average score76.7%
Rating4.74
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Africa
190,100,000
English
160,200,000
Arabic
120,720,000
French
80,000,000
Swahili
40,000,000
Hausa
 
 
Asia
1,075,000,000
Mandarin
550,000,000
Hindi
444,450,000
English
280,000,000
Bengali
100,000,000
Arabic
Europe
263,225,800
English
115,315,000
French
104,950,600
Russian
97,244,378
German
80,000,000
Italian
 
 
North America
307,200,000
English
235,140,000
Spanish
12,670,000
French
2,882,497
Mandarin
1,594,413
Tagalog
Oceania
34,100,000
English
4,125,000
Tok Pisin
665,000
Fijian
400,000
Fiji Hindi
150,000
Māori
 
 
South America
207,000,000
Portuguese
204,925,000
Spanish
17,983,658
English
10,000,000
Quechua
8,000,000
Guarani
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45 Comments
scambigol
+3
Level 77
Jan 11, 2017
how does Italian reach 80M? not sure how Malay/Indonesian work but having typed Malay I thought that would have counted towards Indonesian
Quizzer6794
+4
Level 65
Jan 11, 2017
Malay will now work. According to this page, Italian has 85 million speakers worldwide (keep in mind this includes non-native speakers). In the Americas, there are just about 4 million. Assuming that Asia and Africa equal near 1 million, we rounded and subtracted to a total of 80 million. It seems like a far off number but it looks like it could make sense taking into account nearby European countries that also speak Italian or have Italian as one of their major languages.
RJF
+2
Level 63
Dec 16, 2022
I think that sounds perfectly reasonable, actually.

- There's almost sixty million native speakers in Italy itself and the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland.

- Italian remains a prestige language spoken as a second language by a good number of Slovenes, Croatians and Albanians.

- Many Spaniards and Romanians speak Italian as a second language, at least partly because the similarity to their own native languages makes it easy to learn.

- There's a large Italian diaspora in other European countries, notably France, Britain and Germany, where Italian is still spoken at home.

jriddycuz
+7
Level 67
Jan 11, 2017
Surprised not to see Tok Pisin on there, which has few native speakers but about 4 million L2 speakers. It's the most commonly spoken language in Papua New Guinea. Also Fijian has like 600 k speakers.
Quizzer6794
+1
Level 65
Jan 11, 2017
Thanks! I knew I was missing either a couple from North America or from Oceania :) Appreciated
JonOfKent
+2
Level 57
Apr 21, 2023
Perhaps this is the reason why typing in "Fiji" gives you Fiji Hindi but not Fijian? That totally foxed me - it didn't occur to me that Fiji would be a type-in for something but not Fijian.
kempo
+1
Level 86
Jan 12, 2017
United States alone has thirteen languages with more than 675,000 native speakers, including 2.88 million for different varieties of Chinese, 1.59 million for Tagalog, and 1.14 million for Korean.

http://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/acs-22.pdf

Quizzer6794
+1
Level 65
Jan 12, 2017
Thanks for the data!
Jiaozira
+1
Level 71
Dec 29, 2021
There are also around 600,000 native Mandarin speakers and 400,000 native Tagalog speakers in Canada, so the numbers should probably be a fair bit higher than they already are (hard to say for second language speakers, however).
ivs
+2
Level 91
Jan 13, 2017
Why typing Chinese gives Mandarin for Asia but not for North America?
Quizzer6794
+3
Level 65
Feb 16, 2017
Any corrections to make? We want this quiz to be as accurate as possible, so please comment if you see a mistake!!
GlobalCitizen
+5
Level 65
Dec 29, 2021
Japanese should be the #5 in Asia with at least 121 million speakers in Japan alone.
GlobalCitizen
+5
Level 65
Dec 29, 2021
And after checking, Urdu has even more speakers in Asia. Check this page: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urdu
thread
+8
Level 65
Jul 30, 2022
I think Haitian Creole should be in North America.
tshalla
+1
Level 76
Jul 14, 2023
Pretty much everybody in Haiti speaks it.
Philippelebel
+1
Level 62
May 19, 2024
Haitian Creole has 10 million speakers in Haiti alone, so it should be in the top 5 in North America. Thanks
LichenJan
+1
Level 68
Aug 21, 2024
The Oceania data needs a revamp – between Australia and New Zealand alone there is probably north of 800k Mandarin speakers (not quite sure what NZ descriptors "Northern Chinese" and "Sinitic" are supposed to mean), 380k+ Arabic speakers and 320k+ Vietnamese speakers.

There's also more than 150k Samoan speakers between the two countries, and if we assume that the vast majority of people in Samoa/American Samoa speak Samoan too, there's probably also something like 400k speakers of Samoan in Oceania

Australian 2021 census data is summed up well at https://profile.id.com.au/australia/language (language spoken at home) and New Zealand 2018 census data is summed up well at https://www.ethniccommunities.govt.nz/resources/our-languages-o-tatou-reo/languages-in-nz/

carawebo
+2
Level 75
Feb 21, 2017
I think I told you on the other quiz. The numbers for South America are in conflict with the other one (quechua and other had millions of native speakers)
Quizzer6794
+2
Level 65
Feb 22, 2017
Found the numbers and added them to the quiz!
Damangio
+1
Level 64
Feb 23, 2017
Quechua is spelled wrong.
ludvigrassmus
+9
Level 67
Jun 15, 2019
No Haitian Creole for North America?
dariamustdie
+2
Level 48
Nov 20, 2019
I like how there are more Tagalog speakers in N.America than in Asia xD interesting! Never would have guessed!
comjag
+6
Level 90
Jul 30, 2022
That's wrong.
ArturTamilin
+1
Level 63
Dec 26, 2019
Asian has way less Russian speakers. Like 50-70 million maximum, not 240
MCdoesgeography
+1
Level 69
Jul 7, 2023
Ex Soviet countries maybe? But yeah, 240 is too much
Bubblegum
+1
Level 68
Feb 3, 2020
I’m pretty sure Bengali is missing from Asia erroneously. It’s the 7th most spoken language in the world with the majority of it concentrated in Bangladesh and parts of India.
WolfCam
+1
Level 66
Feb 3, 2020
Great Quiz! One weird thing, when I typed Russian, bengali appeared, and when I typed Malay, it showed Arabic for Asia
Quizzer6794
+2
Level 65
Feb 3, 2020
Whoops, type-ins fixed :)
Kahikatea
+3
Level 76
Jul 12, 2020
Samoan should be on the list for Oceania, ahead of Fiji Hindi

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samoan_language

Whahdjk
+8
Level 47
Mar 16, 2021
shouldn't Haitian creole be above Tagalog and Mandarin in north america with 10 million speakers?
SpencerGT
+1
Level 68
Dec 29, 2021
Can you accept Tagolog?
hwes
+1
Level 86
Dec 29, 2021
Both Canada and US are equally split when it comes to Mandarin vs Cantonese speakers. Between the two countries, there's a million speakers of each. The number in the quiz seems to be a total of both, you might consider reviewing that number. The official Chinese policy is to promote Mandarin and consider the other languages including Cantonese as local dialects. However, the Guangzhou-Hong Kong area from where Cantonese is dominant is also the traditional source of North American immigration. In Vancouver, Cantonese immigration is still more common than Mandarin given its connection to Hong Kong. Politics in the Vancouver Chinese community often focus on this difference.
GlobalCitizen
+1
Level 65
Dec 29, 2021
Japanese should be the #5 language in Asia as there are 121 million speakers of it in Japan only.

I see you placed Arabic in #5 for Asia with 100 million speakers.

GlobalCitizen
+1
Level 65
Dec 29, 2021
And after checking, Urdu has even more speakers in Asia. Check this page: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urdu
JonOfKent
+1
Level 57
Apr 21, 2023
And both Indonesian and Malay each individually more than Urdu, at least according to Wikipedia - 300m and up to 290m respectively
IceLemonTea
+1
Level 64
Dec 30, 2021
Nahuatl has over 1.7 million speakers in Mexico
VaultAgentMoez
+1
Level 64
Jul 30, 2022
Nommed, deserves to be featured
AllHailKingHomer
+1
Level 77
Jul 30, 2022
I should have remembered Guarani and Hausa. Bengali and the oceanic languages were hardest to guess. Good quizzz
Lilylee
+2
Level 75
Apr 21, 2023
Amharic in Ethiopia has almost 60 million speakers in total.
Schiffi
+1
Level 82
Apr 21, 2023
The 97 million you have for Germany are only the native speakers. with none natives it's around 140 million.
GlassMonkeyCode
+1
Level 68
Apr 21, 2023
This is the best quoz
Tassienick
+5
Level 73
Jul 14, 2023
Reckon Australia has a lot more native Mandarin, arabic, Vietnamese speakers than some of the island languages like Fijian.
cashmercury
+2
Level 66
Mar 2, 2024
The numbers for Oceania can't be correct: French should be added. If you take into account French Polynesia and New Caledonia which are French territories with French being the official language, you have in Oceania at least 550 000 French speakers
stubart409
+2
Level 67
May 25, 2024
I think you should accept Pidgin or Pidgin English for Tok Pisin. I also agree with the two previous comments by Tassienick and cashmercury pertaining to Oceania.
JonOfKent
+1
Level 57
Sep 20, 2024
Malay/Indonesian seems to be missing again off Asia - it should be somewhere between 2nd and 4th depending on how you want to count it.
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