What is the most spoken language in Asia?
Mandarin Chinese is the most spoken language in Asia, with about 1.18 billion speakers (around 990 million native). Hindi is second, with about 611 million.
Mandarin Chinese has about 1.18 billion speakers, about 990 million of them native, according to Ethnologue. Almost all of them live in Asia, mainly in China and Taiwan, where it is the official language, and in Singapore, where it is one of four. Counting all varieties of Chinese together, including Cantonese (Yue) and Wu, the total is higher still.
Asia's most spoken languages
| # | Language | Native (m) | Second-language (m) | Total (m) | Main countries |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mandarin Chinese | 988 | 194 | 1,183 | China, Taiwan, Singapore |
| 2 | Hindi | 347 | 264 | 611 | India |
| 3 | Bengali | 234 | 43 | 274 | Bangladesh, India |
| 4 | Indonesian | 78 | 177 | 255 | Indonesia |
| 5 | Urdu | 78 | 168 | 246 | Pakistan, India |
| 6 | Japanese | 124 | 2 | 126 | Japan |
| 7 | Marathi | 83 | 16 | 99 | India |
| 8 | Vietnamese | 86 | 11 | 97 | Vietnam |
| 9 | Telugu | 83 | 13 | 96 | India |
| 10 | Turkish | 86 | 7 | 94 | Turkey, Cyprus |
Note that Hindi and Urdu are counted separately here but are mutually intelligible in everyday speech. Together, as Hindustani, they would have well over 800 million speakers.
What about English and Arabic?
English has more speakers worldwide than Mandarin (about 1.5 billion in total), and it is widely used as a second language in India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Singapore and elsewhere. Reliable counts for Asia alone don't exist, but there are far fewer native English speakers in Asia than native Mandarin speakers. Arabic is the main language of West Asia, but most of the world's Arabic speakers live in North Africa, especially Egypt.
Asia is also the most linguistically diverse continent. Indonesia alone has about 700 living languages and India more than 400, belonging to families such as Sino-Tibetan, Indo-European, Austronesian, Dravidian, Turkic, Austroasiatic and Afro-Asiatic.
Learn more on the languages of Asia page.
Speaker numbers: Ethnologue (2026 edition), worldwide totals in millions; native plus second-language speakers.
Related questions
What is the second most spoken language in Asia?
Hindi, with about 611 million speakers in total (around 347 million native), concentrated in northern and central India.
Is English widely spoken in Asia?
English is an official or widely used second language in India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka and Malaysia, and it is the main language of international business and tourism across the region. Native speakers are relatively few.