Product Code Database
Ethnologue: Languages of the World is an annual reference publication in print and online that provides statistics and other information on the of the world. It is the world's most comprehensive catalogue of languages. (2025). 9783030024383, Springer. ISBN 9783030024383 It was first issued in 1951 and is now published by SIL International, an American evangelical Christian non-profit organization.
Ethnologue includes alternative names and autonyms, the number of L1 and L2 speakers, language prestige, domains of use, Literacy, locations, dialects, language classification, Language family, typology, language maps, country maps, publication and use in media, availability of the Bible in each language and dialect described, religious affiliations of speakers, a cursory description of revitalization efforts where reported, intelligibility and lexical similarity with other dialects and languages, writing scripts, an estimate of language viability using the Expanded Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale (EGIDS), and bibliographic resources. Coverage varies depending on language. For instance, as of 2008, information on word order was present for 15% of entries while religious affiliations were mentioned for 38% of languages. According to Lyle Campbell "language maps are highly valuable" and most country maps are of high quality and user-friendly.
Ethnologue gathers information from SIL's thousands of Field research, surveys done by linguists and literacy specialists, observations of Bible translators, and Crowdsourcing contributions. SIL's field linguists use an online collaborative research system to review current data, update it, or request its removal. 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. 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.
The determination of what characteristics define a single language depends upon sociolinguistics evaluation by various scholars; as the preface to Ethnologue states, "Not all scholars share the same set of criteria for what constitutes a 'language' and what features define a 'dialect'." The criteria used by Ethnologue are mutual intelligibility and the existence or absence of a common literature or ethnolinguistic identity. 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. Ethnologue codes were used as the base to create the new ISO 639-3 international standard. Since 2007, Ethnologue relies only on this standard, administered by SIL International, to determine what is listed as a language.
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.
The Ethnologue database was created in 1971 at the University of Oklahoma under a grant from the National Science Foundation. In 1974 the database was moved to Cornell University. Since 2000, the database has been maintained by SIL International in their Dallas headquarters. In 1997 (13th edition), the website became the primary means of access.
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 and ISO 639-2.
The 14th edition, published in 2000, included 7,148 language codes. In 2002, Ethnologue was asked to work with the International 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. The 15th edition of Ethnologue was the first edition to use this standard. This standard is now administered separately from Ethnologue. SIL International is the registration authority for language names and codes, according to rules established by ISO. Since then Ethnologue relies on the standard to determine what is listed as a language. In only one case, Ethnologue and the ISO standards treat languages slightly differently. ISO 639-3 considers Akan language to be a macrolanguage consisting of two distinct languages, Twi and Fante dialect, whereas Ethnologue 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 2014, with the 17th edition, Ethnologue introduced a numerical code for language status using a framework called EGIDS (Expanded Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale), an elaboration of Joshua Fishman GIDS (Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale). It ranks a language from 0 for an World language to 10 for an extinct language, i.e. a language with which nobody retains a sense of ethnic identity.
In 2015, SIL's funds decreased and in December 2015, Ethnologue launched a metered paywall to cover its cost, as it is financially self-sustaining. Users in high-income countries who wanted to refer to more than seven pages of data per month had to buy a paid subscription. The 18th edition released that year included a new section on language policy country by country.
In 2016, Ethnologue added data about language planning agencies to the 19th edition.
As of 2017, Ethnologue
The early focus of the Ethnologue was on native use (L1) but was gradually expanded to cover L2 use as well.
In 2019, Ethnologue stopped providing free trial views and introduced a hard paywall to cover its nearly $1 million in annual operating costs (website maintenance, security, researchers, and SIL's 5,000 field linguists). Subscriptions start at $480 per person per year, while full access costs $2,400 per person per year. Users in low and middle-income countries as defined by the World Bank are eligible for free access and there are discounts for libraries and independent researchers. Subscribers are mostly institutions: 40% of the world's top 50 universities subscribe to Ethnologue, and it is also sold to business intelligence firms and Fortune 500 companies. The introduction of the paywall was harshly criticized by the community of linguists who rely on Ethnologue to do their work and cannot afford the subscription The same year, Ethnologue launched its contributor program to fill gaps and improve accuracy, allowing contributors to submit corrections and additions and to get a complimentary access to the website. Ethnologue
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 of immigrant 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 of , temporary foreign workers and immigrants.
In 2021, the 24th edition had 7,139 modern languages, an increase of 22 living languages from the 23rd edition. Editors especially improved data about language shift in this edition.
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 the use of languages in education.
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.
In a review of Ethnologue
In 2012, linguist Asya Pereltsvaig described Ethnologue as "a reasonably good source of thorough and reliable geographical and demographic information about the world's languages". 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". 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". (2025). 9789956764983, African Books Collective. ISBN 9789956764983 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.
In 2017, Robert Phillipson and Tove Skutnabb-Kangas described Ethnologue as "the most comprehensive global source list for (mostly oral) languages". (2025). 9780199777716 ISBN 9780199777716 According to the 2018 Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics, Ethnologue is a "comprehensive, frequently updated database on languages and language families'. According to quantitative linguists Simon Greenhill, Ethnologue offers, as of 2018, "sufficiently accurate reflections of speaker population size". Linguists Lyle Campbell and Kenneth Lee Rehg wrote in 2018 that Ethnologue was "the best source that lists the non-endangered languages of the world". (2025). 9780190610029, Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780190610029 Lyle Campbell and Russell Barlow also noted that the 2017 edition of Ethnologue "improved its classification markedly". They note that Ethnologue
The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics uses Ethnologue as its primary source for the list of languages and language maps. (2025). 9780080448541, Elsevier. ISBN 9780080448541 According to linguist Suzanne Romaine, Ethnologue is also the leading source for research on language diversity. According to The 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"." Similarly, linguist David Bradley describes Ethnologue as "the most comprehensive effort to document the level of endangerment in languages around the world." (2025). 9781139644570, Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781139644570 The US National Science Foundation uses Ethnologue to determine which languages are endangered. According to Hammarström et al., Ethnologue is, as of 2022, one of the three global databases documenting language endangerment with the Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger and the Catalogue of Endangered Languages (ELCat). The University of Hawaii Kaipuleohone language archive uses Ethnologue
In 2005, linguist Harald Hammarström wrote that Ethnologue 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". (2025). 9781118827581, John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 9781118827581 In 2011, Hammarström created Glottolog in response to the lack of a comprehensive language bibliography, especially in Ethnologue. In 2015, Hammarström reviewed the 16th, 17th, and 18th editions of Ethnologue 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." 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 that Ethnologue 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. Contrary to Ethnologue, Glottolog does not run its own surveys, but it uses Ethnologue as one of its primary sources. As of 2019, Hammarström uses Ethnologue in his articles, noting that it "has (unsourced, but) detailed information associated with each speech variety, such as speaker numbers and map location". In 2013, responding to feedback about the lack of references, Ethnologue added a link on each language to language resources from the Open Language Archives Community (OLAC) 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. The website provides a list of all of the references cited. In her 2021 review, Shobhana Chelliah noted that Glottolog aims to be better than Ethnologue in language classification and genetic and areal relationships by using linguists' original sources.
| 10 mimeographed pages; 40 languages | |||
| first to include maps | |||
| first edition in book format | |||
| 4,493 languages | |||
| SIL codes first included | |||
| 6,253 languages | |||
| 6,662 languages | |||
| 6,883 languages | |||
| 6,809 languages | |||
| 6,912 languages; draft ISO standard; first edition to provide color maps | |||
| 6,909 languages | |||
| 7,106 living languages | |||
| 7,102 living languages; 7,472 total | |||
| 7,097 living languages | |||
| 7,099 living languages | |||
| 7,097 living languages | |||
| 7,111 living languages | |||
| 23 | 2020 | Eberhard, Simons & Fennig | 7,117 living languages |
| 24 | 2021 | Eberhard, Simons & Fennig | 7,139 living languages |
| 25 | 2022 | Eberhard, Simons & Fennig | 7,151 living languages |
| 26 | 2023 | Eberhard, Simons & Fennig | 7,168 living languages |
| 27 | 2024 | Eberhard, Simons & Fennig | 7,164 living languages |
| 28 | 2025 | Eberhard, Simons & Fennig | 7,159 living languages |
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