Lahnda (Western Punjabi)

Native Speakers: 118 Million

With varying estimates of around 118 million native speakers, the last spot on the list goes to… Lahnda, a Pakistani macrolanguage that primarily includes Western Punjabi! That doesn’t even include Eastern Punjabi, which is spoken in India. The Punjab was sliced in two by the British when they left, and millions of people were forced to abandon their homes, businesses and families. But they’re slowly taking their revenge, Bollywood-style: Punjabi songs now account for 50 percent of chart-toppers. That’s a comeback if we’ve ever seen one.

Furthermore, it also stands in the third place as one of the Indian languages on the list followed by Bengali, and Hindi-Urdu languages and the fourth most spoken language in the UK.

A few facts about the Western Punjabi language:

• Punjabi is a tonal language. This means that tone is used to indicate meaning much like in Vietnamese or Chinese.