Ways to use this list
- Language of the week: spin on Monday and learn to say hello, thank you and the numbers one to five in it by Friday.
- Map work: spin a language and find the countries where it is spoken on a world map, using the list below as the answer key.
- Writers and game masters: spin a real language as inspiration for the sound of an invented one in your story world.
- Multilingual classrooms: add the languages your pupils speak at home, spin, and let a pupil who speaks the winner teach everyone one word.
- Choosing what to learn next: shortlist five languages, run a 🏆 Tournament so the winner has to beat its heat and the final, then stick with it for a month.
Press Spin the wheel, tap the game or press the Space bar. Change the list in the box as you
like: add your own, delete what doesn't suit you, or write *2 after an entry to give it double the
chance. The game buttons switch the same list to a duck race, hat, claw machine and more.
The full list (90 entries)
- English – UK, US, Australia and worldwide
- Spanish – Spain and most of Latin America
- French – France, Canada, Belgium and much of West Africa
- German – Germany, Austria, Switzerland
- Italian – Italy, Switzerland
- Portuguese – Portugal, Brazil, Angola, Mozambique
- Russian – Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan
- Dutch – Netherlands, Belgium, Suriname
- Polish – Poland
- Ukrainian – Ukraine
- Greek – Greece, Cyprus
- Swedish – Sweden, Finland
- Norwegian – Norway
- Danish – Denmark
- Finnish – Finland
- Icelandic – Iceland
- Hungarian – Hungary
- Czech – Czechia
- Romanian – Romania, Moldova
- Irish – Ireland
- Welsh – Wales
- Scottish Gaelic – Scotland
- Basque – the Basque Country in Spain and France
- Catalan – Catalonia in Spain, Andorra
- Latin – ancient Rome; no native speakers today
- Esperanto – invented in 1887 as an easy shared language
- British Sign Language – UK
- Mandarin Chinese – China, Taiwan, Singapore
- Cantonese – southern China, Hong Kong, Macau
- Hindi – India
- Bengali – Bangladesh and West Bengal, India
- Urdu – Pakistan, India
- Punjabi – Punjab in Pakistan and India
- Tamil – Tamil Nadu (India), Sri Lanka, Singapore
- Telugu – Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, India
- Marathi – Maharashtra, India
- Gujarati – Gujarat, India
- Kannada – Karnataka, India
- Malayalam – Kerala, India
- Nepali – Nepal, India
- Sinhala – Sri Lanka
- Japanese – Japan
- Korean – South Korea, North Korea
- Vietnamese – Vietnam
- Thai – Thailand
- Khmer – Cambodia
- Burmese – Myanmar
- Indonesian – Indonesia
- Malay – Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore
- Tagalog – the Philippines
- Mongolian – Mongolia
- Arabic – the Middle East and North Africa
- Hebrew – Israel
- Persian – Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan
- Turkish – Türkiye, Cyprus
- Kazakh – Kazakhstan
- Uzbek – Uzbekistan
- Pashto – Afghanistan, Pakistan
- Armenian – Armenia
- Georgian – Georgia
- Swahili – Kenya, Tanzania and much of East Africa
- Amharic – Ethiopia
- Oromo – Ethiopia, Kenya
- Somali – Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Djibouti
- Hausa – Nigeria, Niger, Ghana
- Yoruba – Nigeria, Benin
- Igbo – Nigeria
- Zulu – South Africa
- Xhosa – South Africa
- Afrikaans – South Africa, Namibia
- Shona – Zimbabwe
- Wolof – Senegal, the Gambia
- Malagasy – Madagascar
- Kinyarwanda – Rwanda
- Lingala – DR Congo, Republic of the Congo
- Tamazight – Morocco, Algeria (also called Berber)
- Quechua – Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador
- Guarani – Paraguay
- Nahuatl – Mexico
- Haitian Creole – Haiti
- Navajo – south-western United States
- Cherokee – Oklahoma and North Carolina, US
- Inuktitut – northern Canada
- Greenlandic – Greenland
- American Sign Language – US, parts of Canada
- Hawaiian – Hawaii
- Māori – New Zealand
- Samoan – Samoa, American Samoa
- Fijian – Fiji
- Tok Pisin – Papua New Guinea
Questions people ask
How many languages are there in the world?
Around 7,000 languages are spoken today; the exact number depends on where you draw the line between a language and a dialect. Many of them are spoken by only a few thousand people.
Which languages are the most spoken?
Counting native and second-language speakers together, the usual top ten are English, Mandarin Chinese, Hindi, Spanish, French, Arabic, Bengali, Portuguese, Russian and Urdu. Sources disagree on the exact order, so treat the Most spoken button as a group, not a ranking.
Are sign languages real languages?
Yes. Sign languages have their own grammar and vocabulary and are not English spelled out with hands. British Sign Language and American Sign Language are so different that their signers cannot easily understand each other.
How are the region buttons grouped?
By where each language began, not everywhere it is spoken today. Spanish and English sit under Europe even though most of their speakers now live elsewhere, and Afrikaans, which grew out of Dutch, sits under Africa.
Can I use it for a fantasy world or tabletop game?
This list holds real human languages. For an invented world, clear the list and type your own languages, or pair it with the fantasy race generator to give each people its own tongue.