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Five Languages with the Most Native Speakers by Continent

For each continent, can you name the five languages with the most native speakers?
Estimates based on this Wikipedia article. For the year 2007
Try the Total Speakers version here
Quiz by Quizzer6794
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Featured Quiz
Last updated: February 17, 2017
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First submittedFebruary 15, 2017
Times taken48,427
Average score56.5%
Rating4.33
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Africa
150 mil
Arabic
34 mil
Hausa
28 mil
Yoruba
25 mil
Amharic
24 mil (tie)
Oromo, Igbo, Fula
 
 
Asia
950 mil
Mandarin
305 mil
Hindi
200 mil
Bengali
125 mil
Japanese
100 mil
Arabic
Europe
95 mil
German
95 mil
Russian
67 mil
French
60 mil
Italian
60 mil
English
 
 
North America
248 mil
English
98 mil
Spanish
10 mil
Haitian Creole
8 mil
French
2 mil
Mandarin
Oceania
19 mil
English
600,000
(Hawaiian Creole)
400,000
Fiji Hindi
339,000
Fijian
150,000
Māori
 
 
South America
206 mil
Portuguese
190 mil
Spanish
8.9 mil
Quechua
4.9 mil
Guarani
2.8 mil
Aymara
relessness
+4
Level 47
Feb 16, 2017
Great! Is Fiji Hindi that different from Hindi?
Quizzer6794
+10
Level 65
Feb 16, 2017
Yes, it is different enough to have Fiji precede the word. Sort of a mix of Fijian and Hindi, really.
Jiaozira
+10
Level 70
Feb 17, 2017
It's kind of like Haitian Creole versus French. Also, Fiji Hindi tends to borrow more words from English than its Indian counterpart.
Jiaozira
+8
Level 70
May 18, 2017
And Fijian Hindi uses the Latin alphabet, not Devanagari script.
fuanacdc
+5
Level 84
Feb 17, 2017
Out of curiosity, why provide Hawaiian Creole? Is that more obscure than some of the others?
Quizzer6794
+11
Level 65
Feb 17, 2017
Hawaiian Creole is there to avoid complaints that Hawaiian is nearly identical to English.
Akula
+5
Level 78
Feb 17, 2017
Would question the number of native speakers of Maori there. There would be certainly that number of people who can speak the language to some degree but not to native speaker level.
fromaj
+3
Level 70
Feb 19, 2017
Samoan would probably be a better option.
RedZombieAngel
+2
Level 35
May 18, 2017
Samoan has Nothing to do with the Maori Language...
Sifhraven
+13
Level 67
Jan 15, 2019
I guess that is the reason why he offers it as a better option, cause if it was the same it is not a new option
Quizzer6794
+4
Level 65
Feb 17, 2017
NOTE: 12 percent of Hawaiian words are simply loanwords from English. And Hawaiian Creole only has 13 percent of its words as loanwords. (to put this into perspective, 1 in every 9 Hawaiian words is a loan from Engish, and 1 in every 7.5 words is a loan from any language!)
fromaj
+1
Level 70
Feb 19, 2017
More commonly known as Hawaiian Pidgin (or just Pidgin).
GraciePearl
+1
Level 52
Mar 4, 2017
Just out of curiosity, how many people in the US have Spanish as their native language? I'm just counting up the US and Canada for native English speakers, and if I'm counting right, that means almost a third of Americans don't use English as their first language. It's interesting - I never realized it was that many people.
Quizzer6794
+2
Level 65
Mar 5, 2017
It accounts to around 40 million!
JBrommit
+2
Level 62
May 19, 2017
Belize and most of the Caribbean countries (Jamaica, Bermuda, Barbados, etc.) are also majority English-speaking.
CaoMaru
+3
Level 50
Feb 2, 2020
There's a very large portion of Canadians who don't speak English as a first language. Many speak French, and then there are immigrants speaking a variety of others on top of that.
TenThousand
+3
Level 76
May 18, 2017
Cool quiz. From Wikipedia: Perhaps one million people now use Tok Pisin [Papua New Guinea's most widely spoken language] as a primary language, but, confusingly, elsewhere I've seen only 120,000 native speakers claimed.
Quizzer6794
+2
Level 65
May 18, 2017
The "perhaps" says it all ;)
wkrpnyc
+5
Level 81
May 18, 2017
Tok Pisin is not native to many, but it's a lingua franca. Just as the colonial languages in Africa.
tshalla
+2
Level 75
Oct 14, 2018
That's right. Bahasa Indonesia was nobody's first language when it became lingua franca in the Dutch East Indies, the legacy of bureaucracy, print, other media, and schools have changed that. I wonder if that's happened in PNG as well.
Louis76
+4
Level 22
May 18, 2017
Not French in Africa ? It's strange
miafred
+1
Level 57
May 18, 2017
In Oceania too, because of New Caledonia and French Polynesia speak french. And it's also an official language in Vanuatu
Quizzer6794
+10
Level 65
May 18, 2017
Many people learn French as a second or third language. The few Africans I know learned English as an L2 language.
kiwiquizzer
+5
Level 68
May 18, 2017
When you put Ahmaric, and despair when it is not accepted...
FatSpartanJediLlama
+5
Level 67
May 18, 2017
I was thinking Swahili would be there for Africa.
Abzilla
+1
Level 47
May 18, 2017
I agree, considering it spans Tanzania and Kenya and parts of Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, DRC, and Mozambique
RockmanYoshi
+12
Level 53
May 31, 2017
Most east africans learn Swahili as their second language unless you're on the coastal part of Kenya/Tanzania, it's a lingua franca.
Confabulously
+1
Level 78
May 19, 2017
I spelled it Yaruba and didn't get it, not trying a respelling, figuring it was probably spelled correctly and just too obscure. Maybe I should stick to geography and steer clear of language, LOL.
recica2
+1
Level 37
May 20, 2017
...I missed Mandarin. *Facepalm*
Thorvald
+2
Level 69
May 27, 2017
Please accept aimar
Almchendolf
+1
Level 54
Feb 17, 2022
Great footballer but this is a language quiz
AllenY
+4
Level 69
Jul 1, 2017
As of 2016 there are nearly 600,000 native Mandarin speakers in Australia alone. There's about another 50,000 Mandarin speakers in New Zealand and a few hundred in Fiji, and probably some more throughout the rest of Oceania. Samoan furthermore is spoken by about 350,000 within New Zealand and Samoa (excluding American Samoa), and there's probably more speakers in Australia, but then Wikipedia says 350k-450k for Fijian which is lowball listed here at 339k. I checked some other immigrant languages, Arabic and Cantonese are both low 300ks, so no need to worry about them.

http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/MediaRealesesByCatalogue/05DEE7DFCA9C2E00CA25814800090FB2?OpenDocument

http://www.stats.govt.nz/Census/2013-census/profile-and-summary-reports/quickstats-culture-identity/languages.aspx

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_New_Zealand

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_in_Fiji

amgine
+3
Level 65
Dec 24, 2017
I put in "Tupi" and "Tupi Guarani" to no avail, bit unfair.
Zaymon
+1
Level 22
Apr 21, 2023
Tupi and Tupi-Guarani aren't the same as Guarani
WolfCam
+3
Level 66
Jan 1, 2018
It's amazing how many people could name a couple African Languages (Swahili, Zulu, Afrikaans etc.) but those aren't even in the top six!
AnkitMohan
+2
Level 28
Jan 20, 2019
I tried Zulu,Xhosa,Swahili,Somali and even Afrikaans
Sifhraven
+2
Level 67
Feb 2, 2020
I tried Swahili, Zulu, Xhosa, Igbo, Afrikaans, thought of Amharic but dismissed it for some reason (perhaps it came to mind when working on another continent) and well, French..
blackgirl
+1
Level 44
Jan 22, 2018
Damn, how could I forget Portuguese :/
Findlay
+2
Level 82
Mar 21, 2018
Is a Wikipedia page quoting an 11-year-old source the best possible source for this quiz? For starters the information is certainly wrong for Oceania in 2018, but I suspect was wrong in 2007 as well. Certainly now Mandarin, but probably also Arabic, Cantonese, Vietnamese and Italian all have numbers of native speakers greater than Maori, according to the 2016 Australian census and extrapolating from the 2013 NZ census (also NZ has about 40,000-50,000 each of Mandarin and Cantonese speakers to add to the Australian figures).
Quizmaster
+1
Level ∞
Mar 22, 2018
You're probably right. Maybe you should update the Wikipedia article? I'll take a look next time the quiz is updated.
Kahikatea
+1
Level 76
Apr 26, 2019
The Wikipedia article doesn't seem to have all the information that this quiz is supposedly based on, such as the guess that 150000 people speak Maori as a first language, or the guess that the number of native speakers of Samoan is less than that.
jblackburn2014
+1
Level 28
Nov 23, 2018
i really question the data here

also the definition of native language

Quizmaster did the best he/she could with the data given, but i reckon the data is bunk

Sifhraven
+1
Level 67
Jan 15, 2019
That was pretty tough ! But i am glad that looking at the answers I couldnt have gotten more than I did. (15/23)

I got 5/5 of europe and asia. 4/5 of north america and oceania, and 2/5 of africa and south america. Nice spread, in pairs haha

DorkmeisterBlu
+1
Level 72
Jan 21, 2019
A little leeway for spelling of Quetchua?
AlexThirkell
+1
Level 75
Apr 6, 2020
I've never seen anyone [even mistakenly] spell it with a 't', but maybe with an 'o' instead of the final 'u'
Trepach
+1
Level 47
Mar 13, 2019
HOW DID I MISS JAPANESE
AlexThirkell
+1
Level 75
Apr 6, 2020
Same. Tried as many Indian/Pakistani languages as I could think of though... :(
svelte
+1
Level 51
Feb 2, 2020
Oh no. I forgot some of my Nigerian languages. I am sorry Hausa.
AlexThirkell
+1
Level 75
Apr 6, 2020
This is a nightmare quiz to keep up-to-date...!
Quizzer6794
+2
Level 65
Apr 6, 2020
Yep :(
Ryan088
+2
Level 33
Jan 8, 2021
How often do u have to change this quiz
davz
+1
Level 44
Feb 24, 2022
swahili?
MalJet
+1
Level 51
May 6, 2022
I would love an update soon! I know some of those answers/numbers have changed by now!
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