Talk:List of languages by total number of speakers

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Why separate Iranian Persian from Afghan and Tajiki Persian?

Iranian Persian, Afghani Persian, and Tajiki Persian should be counted as one language in the list (Persian). They are all mutually intelligible dialects of Persian, akin to British English and American English. Thewikixx (talk) 03:48, 11 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The source does so, so we have to do so. Also, Tajiki Persian uses a different alphabet so all sources consider it a different language for this reason (the same goes for Hindi and Urdu, Serbian and Croatian, and Southern and Northern Azeri). For Dari and Farsi, it's all about politics, unfortunately. a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 07:47, 11 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Korean and Javanese

In the table, Korean has a dash under additional speakers. Finding this unlikely, I went to the footnote, which led to an Ethnologue page where I could not find any indication that there were or were not people who speak Korean as a second language (and Korean was described as the language of South Korea, with no mention of North Korea). I assumed that the dash meant zero speakers since the total number of the speakers is the same as the number of native speakers; how-ever, Javanese has a dash in both the native-speaker and the additional-language speaker columns, although its total is in the millions. The Wikipedia page on native speakers of languages gives Korean as 81 million versus 82 total here, indicating some one million nonnative speakers (or rounding or source differences). (The Encyclopedia Britannica gives about 81,740,000 total speakers versus some 81,720,000 native speakers.) While https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_as_a_foreign_language does not give numbers of learners or nonnative speakers, it lists Korean as relatively high in ranking in some countries as well as stating that one teacher's organization has 1,200 members and that "there were 234 King Sejong Institutes in 82 countries" teaching Korean. See also the article about Korean being the fastest-growing additional language a few years back: https://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20210207000090. What is up with the dashes in general and Korean non-native speaker numbers? Kdammers (talk) 23:00, 28 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi,

Ethnologue 2024 gives: "Total users in all countries: 81,128,730 (as L1: 81,109,730; as L2: 19,000).". If you think the L2 number is incorrect, please contact them and/or join their contributor program.

Still, please note that Ethnologue hasn't updated their top 200 list yet. That's why this page uses the 2023 list instead of the 2024 edition. I've just emailed them to know when they'll update the top list. a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 09:28, 29 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]