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World language families
Language statistics & facts
| Top 30 languages | 20
countries with the most languages
Language families: By speakers
- By languages | Languages
in the United States
Language families by languages
While the Niger-Congo and Austronesian families together account
for fewer than 12% of the world's speakers, they represent more languages
by far than any other group - about 40% of all languages. Both contain
well over 1000 languages.
The third largest group contains 8% of the world's languages and is
spoken by only 6/10ths of 1% (0.06%) of the world.
In fact, the 10 largest language groups in terms of numbers of languages
they contain account for over 3/4 of the languages spoken in the world.
That means that just 1/4 of the languages are spread among the remaining
84 language groups.
Top 10 Languages Families by Number of
Languages
Data source: Ethnologue: Languages
of the World, 15th ed. (2005).
| Language family |
# of languages |
% of all languages |
|
Representative languages
& primary location |
| 1. Niger-Congo |
1495 |
21.36% |
|
Dogon, Sango, Swahili, Wolof, Yoruba, Zulu. Primarily the
indigenous languages of Subsaharan Africa. |
| 2. Austronesian |
1246 |
18.03% |
|
Hawaiian, Javanese, Malay, Tagalog. Spoken on islands of Southeast
Asia and the Pacific with a few speakers on Asian continent. |
| 3. Trans-New Guinea |
561 |
8.12% |
|
Enga, Melpa, Dani, Ekari. Spoken in New Guinea and nearby
islands. |
| 4. Indo-European |
430 |
6.22% |
|
Bengali, English, German, Hindi, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish.
Languages spoken on all inhabited continents. |
| 5. Sino-Tibetan |
399 |
5.77% |
|
Bai, Burmese, Chinese, Tibetan. Languages spoken primarily
in East Asia. |
| 6. Afro-Asiatic |
353 |
5.11% |
|
Arabic, Hausa, Oromo, Somali. Primarily spoken in northern
Africa and the Middle East. |
| 7. Australian |
224 |
3.24% |
|
Kala Lagaw, Western Desert Language. Mainly aboriginal languages
that are near extinct or severly endangered. |
| 8. Nilo-Saharan |
197 |
2.85% |
|
Dinka, Masai, Nubian. African languages spoken mainly in the
upper Chari and Nile River regions. |
| 9. Oto-Manguean |
172 |
2.49% |
|
Mixtec, Zapotec. Native American languages spoken primarily
in Mexico. |
| 10. Austro-Asiatic |
169 |
2.45% |
|
Khmer, Mon, Vietnamese. Spoken in India and Southeast Asia. |
| |
------------ |
|
|
| Total percentage of world's languages:
|
75.91% |
|
|
Today, approximately 500 languages are spoken by only a few elderly
members of a speech community and are in grave danger of extinction.
According to Ethnologue, more than 75% of world's languages are spoken
by fewer than 100,000 speakers.
Language statistics & facts
| Top 30 languages | 20
countries with the most languages
Language families: By speakers
- By languages | Languages
in the United States
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