Frequently asked questions
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EGIDS stands for the Expanded Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale. This is a tool that is used to measure the status of a language in terms of endangerment or development. See Language Status for more information; see Endangerment for information on how this scale relates to endangered languages.
Endangerment
An endangered language is one in which the child-bearing generation is no longer transmitting it to their children. On the EGIDS scale, an endangered language would have a value of 7, 8a, or 8b.
Both extinct languages and dormant languages no longer have any fully-proficient L1 users. The Ethnologue makes a distinction between the two, however, to reflect the differences that exist in the sociolinguistic status of these languages without users. Although a dormant language is not used for daily life, there is an ethnic community that associates itself with a dormant language and view the language as a symbol of that community's identity. Though a dormant language has no proficient users, it retains some social uses. In contrast, an extinct language is no longer claimed by any extant community as the language of their heritage identity. Extinct languages are lacking in both users and societal uses. Some extinct languages, such as Latin, may continue to be used as second-languages only for specific, restricted, often vehicular, functions, that are generally not related to ethnic identity.
There are 373 extinct languages listed in this edition of the Ethnologue. This number does not include long-extinct or dead languages and, more specifically, does not include languages that became extinct before 1950. This number also does not include languages labeled as dormant which, although having no remaining speakers, are considered to have some life.
EGIDS stands for the Expanded Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale. This is a tool that is used to measure the status of a language in terms of endangerment or development. See Language Status for more information; see Endangerment for information on how this scale relates to endangered languages.
How many languages of the world have less than 1,000 speakers? Less than 100 speakers? Less than 10 speakers?
There are 1,543 living languages with less than 1,000 first-language speakers. There are 478 with less than 100 speakers, and 140 with less than 10 speakers.
Products
Previous Ethnologue editions can be found in the footer of all pages in the Other Products column.
You may purchase any of the three hardbound Ethnologue regional volumes by going to your favorite bookseller. Our products page provides links to both Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
Country reports are downloadable as PDFs and can also be found by going to the Ethnologue products page and following the appropriate links.
Languages
7,102.
See the Problem of Language Identification and Statistical Summaries.
Ethnologue itself won't help you learn a language. There are many resources available for the widely known languages that can be found by doing a simple web search. You can use the Other Resources link in each language entry to see what language documentation and literature might be available in the language. The OLAC list of resources may provide a starting point for finding resources for the less commonly known languages where fewer resources are likely to be widely available.
Both extinct languages and dormant languages no longer have any fully-proficient L1 users. The Ethnologue makes a distinction between the two, however, to reflect the differences that exist in the sociolinguistic status of these languages without users. Although a dormant language is not used for daily life, there is an ethnic community that associates itself with a dormant language and view the language as a symbol of that community's identity. Though a dormant language has no proficient users, it retains some social uses. In contrast, an extinct language is no longer claimed by any extant community as the language of their heritage identity. Extinct languages are lacking in both users and societal uses. Some extinct languages, such as Latin, may continue to be used as second-languages only for specific, restricted, often vehicular, functions, that are generally not related to ethnic identity.
Why are there so many more living languages listed in the 17th edition (7106) than there are in the 16th (6909)?
This is a result of the introduction of EGIDS in the 17th edition. The 188 languages that have been placed in the Dormant category (EGIDS 9) were counted as extinct in the previous edition, but are now being distinguished from Extinct (EGIDS 10) and counted as living. In many cases there are revitalization efforts underway to preserve and even revive these languages as part of the heritage of living ethnic communities. While there may be no fully proficient speakers, these languages cannot be accurately identified as extinct. We believe this change aligns with the general consensus of language communities themselves and with the understanding of language preservation and documentation activists.
English [eng]. It is spoken in 129 countries, as an indigenous language or by a substantial immigrant group.
Since the 17th edition, the Ethnologue has deliberately moved away from the official/national distinction in the description of language status, on the grounds that such distinctions are often inconsistently applied from country to country and thus lead to considerable confusion. The categorizations that we now use focus on two facets of language status: the "health" of the language as more fully described by the EGIDS scale, and the function or functions of the language within that country.
For a more complete discussion of how we categorize Language Status, please see this page: http://www.ethnologue.com/about/language-status.
For number of languages, Niger-Congo with 1524 living languages. For number of speakers, Indo-European with nearly 3 billion speakers.
EGIDS stands for the Expanded Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale. This is a tool that is used to measure the status of a language in terms of endangerment or development. See Language Status for more information; see Endangerment for information on how this scale relates to endangered languages.
See http://www.ethnologue.com/statistics/size for data on the most spoken languages of the world.
Countries
Browse the Country Indexes to find the languages in which you are interested, and follow the links to available publications.
The division of the world into 5 major areas which are subdivided into 22 regions follows the groupings of countries used by the United Nations Statistics Division in its reporting. See: http://unstats.un.org/unsd/methods/m49/m49regin.htm
Papua New Guinea has the most languages, with 839 living languages. Indonesia comes in second, with 706 living languages. Third place goes to Nigeria, having 520 living languages.
Vanuatu, with 110 living languages and a geographic area of 12,189 square kilometers, has one language for every 111 square kilometers (43 square miles). (Small political entities, like Vatican State and Monaco, are not included here)
The total world population that Ethnologue reports is the sum of the total populations of L1 speakers of the living languages. Those population numbers come from a variety of sources and from significantly different points in time. In addition, the Ethnologue lacks population estimates for about 4% of the world's languages and also does not automatically extrapolate population estimates to the current year, but waits for reports from reliable sources. As a result our world population count varies considerably from current census estimates.
Publishing
Currently the Ethnologue is only published in English. We have worked with partners on occasion to produce locally published volumes with subsets of the data translated into another language.
In the past, new editions of the Ethnologue were published every four years. Beginning with this edition (17th), we will release a new edition online in the spring of each year with a range of printed volumes following.
In short, no. See our Terms of Use and contact our Permissions Administrator for information about uses of the Ethnologue that exceed those described there.
Previously, SIL bibliographic references were listed for each language displayed on the language entry page. They are no longer there in this new edition. Where are they now, and will they be added to the new website?
The Ethnologue is published by SIL and so Ethnologue.com and SIL.org were tied together in some interesting ways in the past. In creating the new sites (SIL has a new site too if you have not seen it – www.sil.org), some features were moved from the Ethnologue.com site to SIL.org. These resources are now hosted at SIL.org as they are SIL publications. Including them on Ethnologue.com was a source of confusion for some. In order to browse for those resources, you can go to this link: http://www.sil.org/resources/browse/subjectlanguage. Find the language you are interested in and the same resources should be listed as before.
Some countries have no language map(s) for one or more of the following reasons:
1. All the languages are widespread throughout the whole country.
2. There is only one language spoken in the country.
3. The data available to us is not reliable enough to publish.
4. Map production is underway for the country but has not yet been completed.
