How many people speak Hungarian?
In addition to Hungary's approximately 9.7 million population, 1.5 million in Romania, 0.55 million in Slovakia, 0.3 million in Serbia and 0.15 million in Ukraine, and approximately 2 million in non-neighboring countries around the world speak the Hungarian language. Thus, the total number of Hungarian native speakers can be increased to around 14 million, which makes our native language one of the 52 languages spoken by more than 10 million people.
In the past 25 years, the number of Hungarian speakers in the Carpathian Basin has decreased by one million, one of the reasons for which is emigration, and Hungarians abroad have to fight for the use of the language on a daily basis, which also contributes to the decrease of Hungarian as a mother tongue. At the same time, there are also quite a few people who study Hungarian as a foreign language: Hungarian can now be studied at 80 universities in 23 countries, and many language schools offer Hungarian courses around the world.