This page is a list of lists of languages.

Published lists

SIL International SIL Global (formerly known as the Summer Institute of Linguistics International) is an evangelical Christian nonprofit organization whose main purpose is to study, develop and document languages, especially those that are lesser-known, to expan ...

's '' Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' lists over spoken and signed languages. * The

International Organization for Standardization The International Organization for Standardization (ISO ; ; ) is an independent, non-governmental, international standard development organization composed of representatives from the national standards organizations of member countries. M ...

(ISO) assigns codes for most languages; see

ISO 639 ISO 639 is a international standard, standard by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) concerned with representation of languages and language groups. It currently consists of four sets (1-3, 5) of code, named after each part w ...

List of ISO 639-1 codes A list is a set of discrete items of information collected and set forth in some format for utility, entertainment, or other purposes. A list may be memorialized in any number of ways, including existing only in the mind of the list-maker, bu ...

– two-letter codes (184 major languages) **

List of ISO 639-2 codes ISO 639 is a set of international standards that lists short codes for language names. The following is a complete list of three-letter codes defined in part two (ISO 639-2) of the standard, including the corresponding two-letter (ISO 639-1) codes ...

– three-letter codes ** ISO 639 macrolanguage – ISO 639-2 codes used as ISO 639-3 codes ** List of ISO 639-3 codes – three-letter codes, intended to "cover all known natural languages" ** List of ISO 639-5 codes – three-letter codes for

language families A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family. The term ''family'' is a metaphor borrowed from biology, with the tree model used in historical linguistics ana ...

and groups *

IETF language tag An IETF BCP 47 language tag is a standardized code that is used to identify human languages on the Internet. The tag structure has been standardized by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in ''Best Current Practice (BCP) 47''; the subtags ...

– depends on ISO 639, but provides various expansion mechanisms *

Glottolog ''Glottolog'' is an open-access online bibliographic database of the world's languages. In addition to listing linguistic materials ( grammars, articles, dictionaries) describing individual languages, the database also contains the most up-to-d ...

Linguasphere Observatory The Linguasphere Observatory (or the Observatoire, based on its original French and legal title: ''Observatoire Linguistique'') is a non-profit transnational research network, devoted (alongside related programs) to the gathering, study, classifica ...

(LS-2010, totaling over 32,800 coded entries and over 70,900 linguistic names)

English Wikipedia list articles

* Index of language articles

Comprehensive lists

Lists which are global in scope (all living natural languages would classify for inclusion): *by country: ** List of official languages by country and territory **

Number of languages by country This is a list of countries by number of languages according to the 22nd edition of Ethnologue (2019). Languages of Papua New Guinea, Papua New Guinea has the largest number of languages in the world. Number of living languages and speakers ...

*by name:

List of language names A list is a set of discrete items of information collected and set forth in some format for utility, entertainment, or other purposes. A list may be memorialized in any number of ways, including existing only in the mind of the list-maker, but ...

(native names) * by phylogenetic relation: List of language families (phylogenetic) ** by primary language family: List of Afro-Asiatic languages, List of Austronesian languages, List of Indo-European languages, List of Mayan languages, List of Mongolic languages, List of Oto-Manguean languages, List of Tungusic languages, List of Turkic languages, List of Uralic languages. * chronologically:

List of languages by first written accounts This is a list of languages arranged by age of the oldest existing text recording a complete sentence in the language. It does not include undeciphered writing systems, though there are various claims without wide acceptance, which, if substanti ...

*by number of speakers: **

List of languages by total number of speakers This is a list of languages by total number of speakers. It is difficult to define what constitutes a language as opposed to a dialect. For example, while Arabic is sometimes considered a single language centred on Modern Standard Arabic, other a ...

List of languages by number of native speakers This is a list of languages by number of native speakers. All such rankings of human languages ranked by their number of native speakers should be used with caution, because it is not possible to devise a coherent set of linguistic criteria f ...

* List of languages by number of words according to authoritative dictionaries * List of languages by number of phonemes

By region

Languages of Africa The number of languages natively spoken in Africa is variously estimated (depending on the delineation of language vs. dialect) at between 1,250 and 2,100, and by some counts at over 3,000. Nigeria alone has over 500 languages (according to SI ...

Indigenous languages of the Americas The Indigenous languages of the Americas are the languages that were used by the Indigenous peoples of the Americas before the arrival of non-Indigenous peoples. Over a thousand of these languages are still used today, while many more are now e ...

** List of Native American languages acquired by children ** Languages of North America ** Languages of South America *

Languages of Asia Asia is home to hundreds of languages comprising several families and some unrelated isolates. The most spoken language families on the continent include Austroasiatic languages, Austroasiatic, Austronesian languages, Austronesian, Japonic langua ...

East Asian languages The East Asian languages are a language family (alternatively '' macrofamily'' or ''superphylum'') proposed by Stanley Starosta in 2001. The proposal has since been adopted by George van Driem and others. Classifications Early proposals Early ...

Languages of South Asia South Asia is home to several hundred languages, spanning the countries of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. It is home to the fourth most spoken language in the world, Hindi–Urdu; the sevent ...

** Languages of Southeast Asia *

Languages of Europe There are over 250 languages indigenous to Europe, and most belong to the Indo-European language family. Out of a demographics of Europe, total European population of 744 million as of 2018, some 94% are native speakers of an Indo-European lang ...

Languages of Russia Of all the languages of Russia, Russian, the most widely spoken language, is the only official language at the national level. There are 25 other official languages, which are used in different regions of Russia. These languages include; Osse ...

Languages of Oceania Native languages of Oceania fall into three major geographic groups: * The large Austronesian language family, with such languages as Malay ( Indonesian), Tagalog ( Filipino), and Polynesian languages such as Māori and Hawaiian * The var ...

By special type or property

Extinct, endangered or revived languages * Lists of extinct languages ** List of languages by time of extinction * Lists of endangered languages * List of revived languages *

Regional language * A regional language is a language spoken in a region of a sovereign state, whether it be a small area, a federated state or province or some wider area. Internationally, for the purposes of the European Charter for Regional or Minority La ...

By status or cultural sphere of influence

* List of lingua francas * List of official languages ** List of official languages by state ** List of official languages by institution *

Languages used on the Internet Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing. Human language is ch ...

(includes a list of languages with the most prevalence online) * List of mutually intelligible languages

Special types of languages

* List of creole languages * List of mixed languages * List of pidgins, creoles, mixed languages and cants based on Indo-European languages **

List of English-based pidgins Pidgin English is a non-specific name used to refer to any of the many pidgin languages derived from English language, English. Pidgins that are spoken as first languages become creole language, creoles. English-based pidgins that became stable ...

* List of sign languages ** List of sign languages by number of native signers * List of constructed languages