How many languages are spoken in the world today?
World medium Data from 2024
Guess before you scroll — the answer is below
The answer
7,164 languages
Roughly 7.2K.
Ethnologue catalogues just over 7,100 living languages. The distribution is brutally uneven: about half the world speaks one of the 23 largest languages, while more than 3,000 languages have fewer than 10,000 speakers each and are classed as endangered. Roughly one language falls out of use every few weeks.
Where this number comes from
| Source | Ethnologue |
|---|---|
| Figure refers to | 2024 |
| Last checked | |
| Unit | languages |
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