List of languages without official status

Below is list of languages without any official status (or a minority language) by the number of native speakers:

• Javanese language: 80 million speakers, no official status
• Chinese dialects other than Mandarin, Wu Chinese (77 million), Cantonese (70 million), Min (60 million), Gan (20-50 million), Hakka (34 million), Xiang (30-36 million); see identification of the varieties of Chinese
• Sundanese language: 27 million speakers, no official status
• 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.
• Madurese language: 13 million speakers, no official status
• Berber languages: 10 million speakers, no official status
• Lombard language: 9 million speakers, no official status, treated as an Italian dialect
• Neapolitan language: 8 million speakers, no official status, treated as an Italian dialect
• Batak languages (7 languages): 7 million speakers, no official status
• Minangkabau language: 7 million speakers, no official status
• Banjar language: 6 million speakers, no official status
• Krio: 6 millions speakers, de facto national language of Sierra Leone but without official status
• Bhili language: 6 million speakers, largest linguistic community of India without regional status
• Sicilian language: 5 million speakers, no official status
• Bali language: 4 million speakers, no official status
• Bugis language: 4 million speakers, no official status
• Hmong language: 4 million speakers, no official status
• Acehnese language: 3.5 million speakers, no official status
• Yiddish language: 3 million speakers, no official status
• Silesian language: 2 million speakers, no official status
• Aramaic language: 2 million speakers, no official status
• Yi language: 2 million speakers, no official status

Languages with regional status

Indic languages with state official status:

• Telugu language: 76 million speakers, regional status in India
• Marathi language: 60 million speakers, regional status in India
• Sindhi language: 60 million speakers, regional status in Pakistan and India
• Malayalam language: 52 million speakers, regional status in India
• Kannada language: 40 million speakers, regional status in India
• Gujarati language: 40 million speakers, regional status in India
• 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
• Oriya language: 30 million speakers, regional status in India
• Punjabi language: 28 million speakers, regional status in Pakistan and India
• Maithili language: 20 million speakers, regional status in India
• Assamese language: 13 million speakers, regional status in India

Other languages who enjoyed some regional status, but not national/nation-wide:

• Cantonese: 70 million speakers, regional status in Hong Kong and Macau
• Pashto language: 45 million speakers, regional status in Afghanistan and Pakistan
• 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
• Zhuang languages: 14 million speakers, regional status in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region
• Uyghur language: 8-10 million speakers, regional status in Xinjiang
• 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)

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

• 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.