All World Languages in One Visualization
This infographic was originally published in scmp.com
All World Languages, By Native Speakers
View a high resolution version of today’s graphic by clicking here.
Languages provide a window into culture and history. They’re also a unique way to map the world – not through landmasses or geopolitical borders, but through mother tongues.
The Tower of Babel
Today’s infographic from Alberto Lucas Lopez condenses the 7,102 known living languages today into a stunning visualization, with individual colors representing each world region.
Only 23 languages are spoken by at least 50 million native speakers. What’s more, over half the planet speaks at least one of these 23 languages.
Chinese dominates as a macrolanguage, but it’s important to note that it consists of numerous languages. Mandarin, Yue (including Cantonese), Min, Wu, and Hakka cover over 200 individual dialects, which vary further by geographic location.
| Country | Native Chinese speakers (millions) |
|---|---|
 China | 1,152.0 |
 Taiwan | 21.8 |
 Hong Kong SAR | 6.5 |
 Malaysia | 5.1 |
 Singapore | 1.8 |
 Thailand | 1.2 |
 Vietnam | 0.9 |
 Philippines | 0.7 |
 Myanmar | 0.5 |
 Macau SAR | 0.5 |
| Other | 6.0 |
| Total | 1,197 million |
Chinese is one of the most challenging languages for English speakers to pick up, in part due its completely unfamiliar scripts. You’d have to know at least 3,000 characters to be able to read a newspaper, a far cry from memorizing the A-Z alphabet.
Spanglish Takes Over
After Chinese, the languages of Spanish and English sit in second and third place in terms of global popularity. The rapid proliferation of these languages can be traced (Read more...)