World Languages
There are over 7,000 languages spoken across our planet — each one a window into a unique culture, history, and way of seeing the world. We've brought together 56 of the most widely spoken here, complete with the countries where they live. Explore, click, and discover!
Showing 56 languages · sorted by number of speakers
Mandarin Chinese
普通话
Mandarin has 4 different tones — saying the same syllable in a different tone gives it a completely different meaning!
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Hindi
हिन्दी
Hindi is written in the Devanagari script, which reads from left to right. India has 22 officially recognised languages in total!
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Spanish
Español
Spanish is the official language of 20 countries — more countries than any other language in the world!
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Arabic
العربية
Arabic is written and read from right to left! It is also the root language of many English words including algebra, algorithm, coffee, and sugar.
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English
English
English has borrowed words from over 350 other languages — "pyjamas" comes from Hindi, "chocolate" from Nahuatl (Aztec), and "robot" from Czech!
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French
Français
French is spoken on every continent and is official in 29 countries. It was the global language of diplomacy for over 300 years!
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Malay / Indonesian
Bahasa Melayu / Bahasa Indonesia
Malay and Indonesian are so closely related that speakers can largely understand each other. Together they are spoken across the most islands of any language on Earth.
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Portuguese
Português
Over 80% of Portuguese speakers live in Brazil — not Portugal! Portuguese explorers spread the language to four continents during the Age of Discovery.
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Bengali
বাংলা
Bangladesh created International Mother Language Day after students were killed protesting for Bengali in 1952 — now celebrated by the UN on February 21 worldwide.
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Swahili
Kiswahili
"Hakuna Matata" (no worries), "Simba" (lion), and "Rafiki" (friend) from The Lion King are all real Swahili words!
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Urdu
اردو
Urdu and Hindi are so similar in spoken form that speakers can often understand each other perfectly — but they use completely different scripts!
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Russian
Русский
Russian uses the Cyrillic alphabet with 33 letters. Russian was the first language ever spoken in space — Yuri Gagarin's first words on orbit were in Russian!
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Japanese
日本語
Japanese uses three different writing systems at the same time! And the word "emoji" literally comes from Japanese — e (picture) + moji (character).
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German
Deutsch
German creates gloriously long compound words — "Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz" (63 letters) was once a real legal term!
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Nigerian Pidgin
Naijá
Nigerian Pidgin (Naijá) connects over 500 Nigerian tribes and ethnic groups — and is the language of Afrobeats, one of the world's fastest-growing music genres!
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Vietnamese
Tiếng Việt
Vietnamese uses the Latin alphabet with extra accent marks to show 6 tones! The same syllable "ma" can mean mother, ghost, rice seedling, cheek, horse, or tomb.
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Marathi
मराठी
Marathi is the language of Mumbai and Maharashtra — home to Bollywood. The 13th-century poet Dnyaneshwar wrote one of India's greatest spiritual texts in Marathi!
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Tagalog / Filipino
Filipino
The Philippines has over 170 languages! Many Filipinos also speak English fluently — making them one of the largest English-speaking populations in Asia.
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Telugu
తెలుగు
Telugu is nicknamed the "Italian of the East" because every word ends in a vowel! The Tollywood film industry makes more films annually than any other Indian film industry.
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Tamil
தமிழ்
Tamil is one of the world's oldest living languages — with a continuous literary tradition of over 2,000 years. The ancient Sangam poems are still taught in Tamil schools today!
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Cantonese
廣東話
Cantonese has up to 9 tones and is the language of dim sum, kung fu cinema, and the world's Chinatowns — most overseas Chinese restaurants speak Cantonese!
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Turkish
Türkçe
Turkish is "agglutinative" — you can build one enormous word by sticking many meaning pieces together! It switched from Arabic to Latin script in 1928.
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Korean
한국어
The Korean alphabet Hangul was scientifically designed by King Sejong in 1443 — its letters are shaped to show where in the mouth the sounds are made!
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Farsi (Persian)
فارسی
Persian is one of the world's oldest living languages. It gave us "chess", "paradise", "bazaar", and "jasmine" in English, and Rumi remains the world's best-selling poet!
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Wu Chinese
吴语
Wu Chinese is the language of Shanghai — China's most international city. The Yangtze Delta's Wu-speaking region generates 25% of China's entire GDP!
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Hausa
Hausa
Hausa is the major trade language across West Africa and the Sahel, with BBC and Voice of America both broadcasting in Hausa to reach 70+ million listeners!
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Javanese
ꦧꦱꦗꦮ
The English word "java" (coffee) comes from Java island! Javanese has three separate levels of politeness and is home to the world's largest Buddhist temple, Borobudur.
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Italian
Italiano
Italian is the language of music! All musical directions worldwide — piano, forte, allegro, adagio — are Italian. If you've eaten pizza, pasta or gelato, you've spoken Italian!
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Punjabi
ਪੰਜਾਬੀ
Punjabi is the third most spoken language in Canada! Bhangra — Punjab's harvest dance — now influences global pop, and the Golden Temple feeds 100,000 visitors free food daily.
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Thai
ภาษาไทย
Thai script is written without spaces between words, has 5 tones, and 44 consonants. Thai New Year (Songkran) is celebrated with the world's biggest water fight!
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Kannada
ಕನ್ನಡ
Kannada has won more of India's top literary awards than any other language! And Bangalore — the Kannada-speaking capital of Karnataka — is India's tech capital.
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Gujarati
ગુજરાતી
Mahatma Gandhi spoke Gujarati! Gujarat has one of the world's most entrepreneurial diaspora communities — with major Gujarati communities from Leicester to Houston to Nairobi.
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Polish
Polski
Polish has seven grammatical cases and some notoriously tricky consonant clusters — "Szczebrzeszyn" is a real Polish town name!
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Yoruba
Yorùbá
Yoruba culture survived the slave trade to take root in Brazil and Cuba — the Candomblé and Santería religions are built on Yoruba spiritual traditions!
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Sundanese
Basa Sunda
The angklung — Sundanese bamboo musical instruments played together in orchestras — is UNESCO-listed! Learning to play it is taught in schools across West Java.
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Oromo
Afaan Oromoo
Oromo has one of Africa's oldest democratic governance systems — the Gadaa system is 500 years old and UNESCO-listed. Oromo athletes are among the world's greatest marathon runners!
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Pashto
پښتو
Pashto's landay poetry — just 22 syllables in two lines — has been used by Pashtun women to express love and courage for centuries. Pashtunwali demands that any guest must be fed and protected.
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Malayalam
മലയാളം
"Malayalam" is a perfect palindrome — it reads the same forwards and backwards! Kerala's literacy rate is nearly 100%, and the state is the world capital of Ayurvedic medicine.
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Xiang Chinese
湘语
The Avatar Mountains of Zhangjiajie, Hunan — the inspiration for James Cameron's Pandora — are in Xiang Chinese-speaking territory! Hunan is also famous for some of China's spiciest food.
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Amharic
አማርኛ
Amharic uses the Ge'ez script (Fidel), one of the world's oldest writing systems still in daily use — over 2,000 years old! Ethiopia is also the birthplace of coffee.
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Uzbek
O'zbek tili
Al-Khwarizmi — the mathematician who gave us "algebra" and "algorithm" — came from Uzbekistan! And Samarkand's Registan is considered one of the most beautiful architectural sights on Earth.
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Burmese
မြန်မာဘာသာ
The Burmese script's circular letters were designed for writing on banana leaves without tearing them! Myanmar has over 2,000 ancient Buddhist temples in Bagan alone.
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Ukrainian
Українська
Ukrainian's national colours (blue and yellow) represent the sky above golden wheat fields. Ukraine was historically called the "breadbasket of Europe" for its extraordinary agricultural land.
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Dutch
Nederlands
Dutch is the closest living relative of English — they share a common ancestor! Dutch gave English "cookie", "cosy", "boss", "yacht", "waffle", and Santa Claus (Sinterklaas).
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Somali
Soomaali
Somali only got an official written form in 1972 — before that it was an entirely oral tradition. Somali oral poets are called "gabaye" and are deeply respected in society.
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Nepali
नेपाली
Nepal's word for Mount Everest is "Sagarmatha" — meaning "Goddess of the Sky". Nepal is home to 8 of the world's 10 highest mountains!
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Sinhala
සිංහල
The Sinhala script's rounded, curling letters were designed to be written on palm leaves without splitting them — beauty born from practical necessity!
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Swedish
Svenska
Swedish has a uniquely musical quality — it uses pitch accent, meaning the same word spoken with different tones can have different meanings, giving Swedish its distinctive sing-song melody!
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Czech
Čeština
Czech playwright Karel Čapek invented the word "robot" in 1920 — from "robota" meaning forced labour. Czech is also the only language with the letter "ř" — a unique rolled-fricative sound found nowhere else!
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Danish
Dansk
The word "hygge" — Denmark's concept of cosiness and togetherness — has no direct English translation, but became a global phenomenon! LEGO is also a Danish word, from "leg godt" meaning "play well".
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Mongolian
Монгол хэл
Mongolian is still written in a traditional vertical script (top to bottom) for official documents. Mongolian throat singing can produce two pitches at the same time!
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Finnish
Suomi
Finnish belongs to the Uralic language family — meaning it's more closely related to Estonian and Hungarian than to English, French, or German! Finland also has the world's highest sauna-to-person ratio.
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Norwegian
Norsk
Norwegian has two official written forms — Bokmål and Nynorsk — and students must learn both in school! The language is mutually intelligible with Swedish and Danish, so Scandinavians from different countries can mostly understand each other.
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Irish
Gaeilge
Irish (Gaeilge) is written in the Latin alphabet but has unique spelling rules — "mh" sounds like "v" and "bh" also sounds like "v". The greeting "Dia duit" literally means "God be with you"!
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Welsh
Cymraeg
Welsh is one of Europe's oldest living languages — spoken for 1,500 years! The word "penguin" is thought to come from Welsh "pen gwyn" (white head).
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Māori
Te Reo Māori
Te Reo Māori was nearly lost — but Māori language nests (Kōhanga Reo) saved it. The model of immersive language revival schools is now used all over the world!
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