Ethnologue: Languages of the World is an annual reference publication in print and online that provides statistics and other information on theliving languages of the world. It is the world's most comprehensive catalogue of languages.[2] It was first issued in 1951 and is now published bySIL Global, an AmericanevangelicalChristian non-profit organization.
Ethnologue has been published by SIL Global (formerly known as the Summer Institute of Linguistics), a Christianlinguistic service organization with an international office inDallas, Texas. The organization studies numerous minority languages to facilitate language development, and to work with speakers of such language communities in translating portions of the Bible into their languages.[3] Despite the Christian orientation of its publisher,Ethnologue is not ideologically or theologically biased.[4]
Ethnologue gathers information from SIL's thousands offield linguists,[1] surveys done by linguists and literacy specialists, observations ofBible translators, andcrowdsourced contributions.[6][10] SIL's field linguists use an online collaborative research system to review current data, update it, or request its removal.[11] SIL has a team of editors by geographical area who prepare reports to Ethnologue's general editor. These reports combine opinions from SIL area experts and feedback solicited from non-SIL linguists. Editors have to find compromises when opinions differ.[12] Most of SIL's linguists have taken three to four semesters of graduate linguistics courses, and half of them have a master's degree. They're trained by 300 PhD linguists in SIL.[13]
The determination of what characteristics define a single language depends uponsociolinguistic evaluation by various scholars; as the preface toEthnologue states, "Not all scholars share the same set of criteria for what constitutes a 'language' and what features define a 'dialect'."[5] The criteria used byEthnologue aremutual intelligibility and the existence or absence of a common literature or ethnolinguistic identity.[5][12][14] The number of languages identified has been steadily increasing, from 5,445 in the 10th edition (in 1984) to 6,909 in the 16th (in 2009), partly due to governments recognizing mutually intelligible varieties as separate languages, and partly due to SIL establishing new Bible translation needs.[15]Ethnologue codes were used as the base to create the newISO 639-3 international standard. Since 2007,Ethnologue relies only on this standard,administered by SIL International,[16] to determine what is listed as a language.[5]
In addition to choosing a primary name for a language,Ethnologue provides listings of other name(s) for the language and any dialects that are used by its speakers, government, foreigners and neighbors. Also included are any names that have been commonly referenced historically, regardless of whether a name is considered official, politically correct or offensive; this allows more complete historical research to be done. These lists of names are not necessarily complete.
Ethnologue was founded in 1951 by Richard S. Pittman and was initially focused on minority languages, to share information on Bible translation needs.[17][18] The first edition included information on 46 languages.[18][17] Hand-drawn maps were introduced in the fourth edition (1953).[18] The seventh edition (1969) listed 4,493 languages.[18][17] In 1971,Ethnologue expanded its coverage to all known languages of the world.[18][17]
In 1984,Ethnologue released a three-letter coding system, called 'SIL code', to identify each language that it described. This set of codes significantly exceeded the scope of other existing standards, e.g.ISO 639-1 andISO 639-2.[19][18][17]
The 14th edition, published in 2000, included 7,148 language codes. In 2002,Ethnologue was asked to work with theInternational Organization for Standardization (ISO) to integrate its codes into a draft international standard.Ethnologue codes have then been adopted by ISO as the international standard,ISO 639-3.[12][5] The 15th edition ofEthnologue was the first edition to use this standard. This standard is now administered separately from Ethnologue. SIL International is theregistration authority for language names and codes,[5] according to rules established by ISO.[16] Since thenEthnologue relies on the standard to determine what is listed as a language.[17] In only one case,Ethnologue and the ISO standards treat languages slightly differently. ISO 639-3 considersAkan to be amacrolanguage consisting of two distinct languages,Twi andFante, whereasEthnologue considers Twi and Fante to be dialects of a single language (Akan), since they are mutually intelligible. This anomaly resulted because the ISO 639-2 standard has separate codes for Twi and Fante, which have separate literary traditions, and all 639-2 codes for individual languages are automatically part of 639-3, even though 639-3 would not normally assign them separate codes.
In 2015, SIL's funds decreased and in December 2015,Ethnologue launched a meteredpaywall to cover its cost, as it is financially self-sustaining.[1] Users inhigh-income countries who wanted to refer to more than seven pages of data per month had to buy apaid subscription.[21][1] The 18th edition released that year included a new section onlanguage policy country by country.[22][23]
In 2016,Ethnologue added data aboutlanguage planning agencies to the 19th edition.[24]
The early focus of the Ethnologue was on native use (L1) but was gradually expanded to cover L2 use as well.[26]
In 2019,Ethnologue stopped providing free trial views and introduced ahard paywall to cover its nearly $1 million in annual operating costs (website maintenance, security, researchers, and SIL's 5,000 field linguists).[1][27] Subscriptions start at $480 per person per year,[1] while full access costs $2,400 per person per year.[9] Users inlow and middle-income countries as defined by theWorld Bank are eligible for free access and there are discounts for libraries and independent researchers.[9] Subscribers are mostly institutions: 40% of the world's top 50 universities subscribe toEthnologue,[6] and it is also sold to business intelligence firms and Fortune 500 companies.[1] The introduction of the paywall was harshly criticized by the community of linguists who rely onEthnologue to do their work and cannot afford the subscription[1] The same year,Ethnologue launched its contributor program to fill gaps and improve accuracy,[28][27] allowing contributors to submit corrections and additions and to get a complimentary access to the website.[29]Ethnologue's editors gradually review crowdsourced contributions before publication.[30][6] As 2019 was theInternational Year of Indigenous Languages, this edition focused onlanguage loss: it added the date when the last fluent speaker of the language died, standardized the age range of language users, and improved theEGIDS estimates.[31]
In 2020, the 23rd edition listed 7,117 living languages, an increase of 6 living languages from the 22nd edition. In this edition,Ethnologue expanded its coverage ofimmigrant languages: previous editions only had full entries for languages considered to be "established" within a country. From this edition,Ethnologue includes data about the first and second languages ofrefugees, temporaryforeign workers and immigrants.[32][6]
In 2021, the 24th edition had 7,139 modern languages, an increase of 22 living languages from the 23rd edition. Editors especially improved data aboutlanguage shift in this edition.[33]
In 2022, the 25th edition listed a total of 7,151 living languages, an increase of 12 living languages from the 24th edition. This edition specifically improved theuse of languages in education.[34]
In 2023, the 26th edition listed a total of 7,168 living languages, an increase of 17 living languages from the 25th edition.
In 2024, the 27th edition listed a total of 7,164 living languages, a decrease of 4 living languages from the 26th edition.[35]
In 1986,William Bright, then editor of the journalLanguage, wrote ofEthnologue that it "is indispensable for any reference shelf on the languages of the world".[36] The 2003International Encyclopedia of Linguistics describedEthnologue as "a comprehensive listing of the world's languages, with genetic classification",[37] and follows Ethnologue's classification.[12] In 2005, linguistsLindsay J. Whaley andLenore Grenoble considered thatEthnologue "continues to provide the most comprehensive and reliable count of numbers of speakers of the world's languages", still they recognize that "individual language surveys may have far more accurate counts for a specific language, butThe Ethnologue is unique in bringing together speaker statistics on a global scale".[38] In 2006,computational linguists John C. Paolillo and Anupam Das conducted a systematic evaluation of available information on language populations for theUNESCO Institute for Statistics. They reported thatEthnologue andLinguasphere were the only comprehensive sources of information about language populations and thatEthnologue had more specific information. They concluded that: "the language statistics available today in the form of theEthnologue population counts are already good enough to be useful"[39] According to linguistWilliam Poser,Ethnologue was, as of 2006, the "best single source of information" on language classification.[40] In 2008 linguistsLyle Campbell and Verónica Grondona highly commendedEthnologue inLanguage. They described it as a highly valuable catalogue of the world's languages that "has become the standard reference" and whose "usefulness is hard to overestimate". They concluded thatEthnologue was "truly excellent, highly valuable, and the very best book of its sort available."[5]
In a review ofEthnologue's 2009 edition inEthnopolitics,Richard O. Collin, professor of politics, noted that "Ethnologue has become a standard resource for scholars in the other social sciences: anthropologists, economists, sociologists and, obviously, sociolinguists". According to Collin,Ethnologue is "stronger in languages spoken by indigenous peoples in economically less-developed portions of the world" and "when recent in-depth country-studies have been conducted, information can be very good; unfortunately [...] data are sometimes old".[4]
In 2012, linguistAsya Pereltsvaig describedEthnologue as "a reasonably good source of thorough and reliable geographical and demographic information about the world's languages".[41] She added in 2021 that its maps "are generally fairly accurate although they often depict the linguistic situation as it once was or as someone might imagine it to be but not as it actually is".[42] Linguist George Tucker Childs wrote in 2012 that: "Ethnologue is the most widely referenced source for information on languages of the world", but he added that regarding African languages, "when evaluated against recent field experience [Ethnologue] seems at least out of date".[43] In 2014,Ethnologue admitted that some of its data was out-of-date and switched from a four-year publication cycle (in print and online) to yearly online updates.[44]
In 2017,Robert Phillipson andTove Skutnabb-Kangas describedEthnologue as "the most comprehensive global source list for (mostly oral) languages".[45] According to the 2018Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics,Ethnologue is a "comprehensive, frequently updated [database] on languages and language families'.[46] According toquantitative linguistsSimon Greenhill,Ethnologue offers, as of 2018, "sufficiently accurate reflections of speaker population size".[47] Linguists Lyle Campbell and Kenneth Lee Rehg wrote in 2018 thatEthnologue was "the best source that lists the non-endangered languages of the world".[48] Lyle Campbell and Russell Barlow also noted that the 2017 edition ofEthnologue "improved [its] classification markedly". They note thatEthnologue's genealogy is similar to that of theWorld Atlas of Language Structures (WALS) but different from that of theCatalogue of Endangered Languages (ELCat) and Glottolog.[49] LinguistLisa Matthewson commented in 2020 thatEthnologue offers "accurate information about speaker numbers".[50] In a 2021 review ofEthnologue and Glottolog, linguistShobhana Chelliah noted that "For better or worse, the impact of the site is indeed considerable. [...] Clearly, the site has influence on the field of linguistics and beyond." She added that she, among other linguists, integratedEthnologue in her linguistics classes."[6]
TheEncyclopedia of Language and Linguistics usesEthnologue as its primary source for the list of languages and language maps.[51] According to linguistSuzanne Romaine,Ethnologue is also the leading source for research onlanguage diversity.[52] According toThe Oxford Handbook of Language and Society,Ethnologue is "the standard reference source for the listing and enumeration of Endangered Languages, and for all known and "living" languages of the world"."[53] Similarly, linguistDavid Bradley describesEthnologue as "the most comprehensive effort to document the level of endangerment in languages around the world."[54] The USNational Science Foundation usesEthnologue to determine which languages are endangered.[6] According to Hammarström et al.,Ethnologue is, as of 2022, one of the three global databases documenting language endangerment with theAtlas of the World's Languages in Danger and the Catalogue of Endangered Languages (ELCat).[55] The University of HawaiiKaipuleohone language archive usesEthnologue's metadata as well.[6] TheWorld Atlas of Language Structures usesEthnologue's genealogical classification.[56] TheRosetta Project usesEthnologue's language metadata.[57]
In 2005, linguistHarald Hammarström wrote thatEthnologue was consistent with specialist views most of the time and was a catalog "of very high absolute value and by far the best of its kind".[58][12] In 2011, Hammarström createdGlottolog in response to the lack of a comprehensive language bibliography, especially inEthnologue.[59][60][61] In 2015, Hammarström reviewed the 16th, 17th, and 18th editions ofEthnologue and described the frequent lack of citations as its only "serious fault" from a scientific perspective. He concluded: "Ethnologue is at present still better than any other nonderivative work of the same scope. [It] is an impressively comprehensive catalogue of world languages, and it is far superior to anything else produced prior to 2009. In particular, it is superior by virtue of being explicit."[62] According to Hammarström, as of 2016,Ethnologue and Glottolog are the only global-scale continually maintained inventories of the world's languages. The main difference is thatEthnologue includes additional information (such as speaker numbers or vitality) but lacks systematic sources for the information given. In contrast, Glottolog provides no language context information but points to primary sources for further data.[63][64] Contrary toEthnologue, Glottolog does not run its own surveys,[1] but it usesEthnologue as one of its primary sources.[1][65] As of 2019, Hammarström usesEthnologue in his articles, noting that it "has (unsourced, but) detailed information associated with each speech variety, such as speaker numbers and map location".[66] In 2013, responding to feedback about the lack of references,Ethnologue added a link on each language to language resources from theOpen Language Archives Community (OLAC)[67]Ethnologue acknowledges that it rarely quotes any source verbatim but cites sources wherever specific statements are directly attributed to them, and corrects missing attributions upon notification.[68] The website provides a list of all of the references cited.[69][70] In her 2021 review, Shobhana Chelliah noted that Glottolog aims to be better thanEthnologue in language classification and genetic and areal relationships by using linguists' original sources.[6]
^Brunn, Stanley D.; Kehrein, Roland, eds. (2020).Handbook of the Changing World Language Map. Vol. 1. Cham, Switzerland: Springer. p. 46.ISBN978-3-030-02438-3.OCLC1125944248.Cites: Pereltsvaig, A. (2012).Languages of the World: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
^Bright, William (1986). "Ethnologue: Languages of the world Ed. by Barbara F. Grimes, and: Index to the Tenth edition of Ethnologue: Languages of the world Ed. by Barbara F. Grimes (review)".Language.62 (3): 698.doi:10.1353/lan.1986.0027.ISSN1535-0665.S2CID143911105.
^Childs, George Tucker (2017). "One language or two? Bom and Kim, two highly endangered South Atlantic "languages"". In Chibaka, Evelyn Fogwe; Atindogbé, Gratien (eds.).Proceedings of the 7th World Congress of African Linguistics, Buea, 17-21 August 2012. Vol. 2. Oxford: African Books Collective. p. 304.ISBN978-9956-764-98-3.OCLC973799450.
^Campbell, Lyle; Rehg, Kenneth L. (2018). "Introduction".The Oxford Handbook of Endangered Languages. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.ISBN978-0-19-061002-9.OCLC1003268966.
^Brown, E. Keith; Anderson, Anne, eds. (2006). "Notes on the List of Languages & Language Maps".Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (2 ed.). Amsterdam: Elsevier.ISBN978-0-08-044854-1.OCLC771916896.
^Gooskens, Charlotte (2018). "Dialect Intellibility". In Boberg, Charles; Nerbonne, John A.; Landon Watt, Dominic James (eds.).The Handbook of Dialectology. John Wiley & Sons. p. 206.ISBN978-1-118-82758-1.OCLC1022117457.
^Hammarström, Harald (2015). "Ethnologue 16/17/18th editions: A comprehensive review".Language.91 (3):723–737.doi:10.1353/lan.2015.0038.hdl:11858/00-001M-0000-0014-C719-6.ISSN1535-0665.S2CID119977100.Conclusion. From a scientific perspective, there is really only one serious fault with E16/E17/E18, namely, that the source for the information presented is not systematically indicated.
