How many languages are there in the world?

6,909.

There are 6,909 living languages in the world. This is according to the Summer Institute of Linguistic’â„¢s World Ethnologue published in 2009. The most widely-spoken language is Mandarin Chinese, with about 845 million speakers worldwide, followed by Spanish with 329 million speakers.  This count does not include languages not spoken anymore, called the dead languages.