List of largest languages without official status

Since it is impossible to list all the languages here, therefore, only languages with more than 1 million speakers will be listed here

Below is list of languages without any official status (or a minority language) with more than a million speakers, ordered by the number of native speakers:

:*Non Mandarin Chineses, Wu (77 million), Yue (70 million), Min (60 million), Gan (20–50 million), Hakka (34 million), Xiang (30–36 million); see identification of the varieties of Chinese

1. Javanese language: 80 million speakers, no official status in Indonesia
2. Sundanese language: 27 million speakers, no official status in Indonesia
3. Madurese language: 13 million speakers, no official status in Indonesia
4. Batak languages (7 languages): 7 million speakers, no official status in Indonesia
5. Minangkabau language: 7 million speakers, no official status in Indonesia
6. Banjar language: 6 million speakers, no official status in Indonesia
7. Krio: 6 millions speakers, de facto national language of Sierra Leone but without official status
8. Bhili language: 6 million speakers, largest linguistic community of India without regional status
9. Balinese language: 4 million speakers, no official status in Indonesia
10. Bugis language: 4 million speakers, no official status
11. Hmong language: 4 million speakers, no official status
12. Acehnese language: 3.5 million speakers, no official status in Indonesia
13. Silesian language: 2 million speakers, no official status
14. Aramaic language: 2 million speakers, no official status
15. Yi language: 2 million speakers, no official status

Languages with official status in their region but not country

• Telugu language: 76 million speakers, state official status in India
• Marathi language: 60 million speakers, state official status in India
• Malayalam language: 38 million speakers, state official status in India
• Kannada language: 40 million speakers, state official status in India
• Gujarati language: 40 million speakers, state official status in India
• Oriya language: 30 million speakers, state official status in India
• Punjabi language: 100 million speakers, regional status in Pakistan where its speakers form the majority of the country's population, but state official status in India
• Maithili language: 20 million speakers, state official status in India
• Assamese language: 13 million speakers, state official status in India
• Uyghur language: 8–11 million speakers, regional official status in China
• Konkani language: 7.4 million speakers, state official status in India
• Santali language: 6.2 million speakers, state official status in India
• Tatar language: 5.4 million speakers, regional official status in Russia (Tatarstan)
• Mundari language: 2,080,000 speakers, state official status in India
• Meitei language: 1.4 million speakers, state official status in India

Language with low regional status

• Bhojpuri language: 35 million speakers, formerly considered a dialect of Hindi, in the process of being granted regional status on its own right in India
• Kurdish language: 16–26 million speakers, regional status in Iraq
• Oromo language: 25 million speakers, regional status in Ethiopia and Kenya
• Cebuano language: 20 million speakers, regional status in Central Visayas, Philippines
• Hausa, Yoruba and Igbo with close to 20 million speakers each are the major languages of Nigeria, all three with regional status, and none with majority status.
• Zhuang languages: 14 million speakers, regional status in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region
• Balochi language: 8 million speakers, regional status in Balochistan
• Ilokano language: 8 million speakers, regional status in Ilocos Region, Philippines
• Hiligaynon language: 7 million speakers, regional status in Western Visayas, Philippines

See also

• Lists of languages
• Official language and List of official languages
• List of official languages by state
• List of languages by total number of speakers
• List of languages by number of native speakers
• List of most widely spoken languages (by number of countries)
• List of Wikipedias

References

• Writing Systems of the World: Alphabets, Syllabaries, Pictograms (1990), ISBN 0-8048-1654-9 — lists official languages of the countries of the world, among other information.

External links

• Publications from Mikroglottika, Journal about Minority Languages
• Sardinian language's office – University of Cagliari
• Blog of Sardinian language's office – University of Cagliari: news about sardinian language and culture
• Onkwehonwe.com Learning Labs
• Languages by country in The World Factbook
• Ethnologue's most recent list of languages arranged by number of speakers
• List of top 100 languages in 13th edition of Ethnologue (1996)
• Different lists of the most spoken languages (the Ethnologue list is from a previous, not the 2005, edition).
• Ethnologue – SIL's Ethnologue, widely referenced source for the world's languages
• Languages Spoken by More Than 10 Million People (Archived 2009-10-31) – Encarta list, based on data from Ethnologue, but some figures (e.g. for Arabic) widely vary from it
• Top 30 languages of the world
• 30 most widely spoken world languages
• Interactive world map of language distribution
• Map of World Languages. Download of MP3 audio files in 1600 language combinations.