Welcome to the 28th edition
As our contribution to the celebration of International Mother Language Day, we are pleased to announce the release of the 28th edition of Ethnologue. Mother Language Day, February 21, reminds the world of the importance of the lesser-known languages of the world. Because knowledge about lesser-known languages has been a focus of the Ethnologue since its inception in 1951, we are pleased to be able to provide our most up-to-date information about the languages of the world each year on this day. This new edition is the result of over 16,000 updates that have been made to the Ethnologue database since the 27th edition was released one year ago. The descriptions of 2,673 languages contain at least one update.
Not only are languages constantly changing, so is what we know about them. Therefore the total number of living languages in the world cannot be known precisely. That number changes as knowledge of the world’s languages improves. This edition lists a total of 7,159 living languages worldwide—a net decrease of 5 living languages since the previous edition of Ethnologue was published one year ago. This is the result of changes in the extinction status of some languages and changes in the ISO 639-3 inventory of languages (which Ethnologue stays aligned with). This edition drops 9 languages that were listed as living in the previous edition (5 having changed in status from living to extinct, 2 being designated as unattested, and 2 having been removed from the ISO standard—one as being the duplicate of another language and the other as being a dialect of another language). Conversely, 4 languages are newly listed as living (all of which were added by the ISO standard as being previously unidentified).
This edition also incorporates updates to many of the language maps. The only new map plates in this edition are for Vietnam, where much more detail is now given by virtue of expanding the former treatment in terms of 4 map plates to a new set of 10 map plates..
And the job is not finished yet! As we work diligently to research the language situation of the world, we will continue to benefit from the knowledge of our users who are familiar with specific countries and languages. We value your input and we encourage you to join our Contributor Program. With a contributor account you will be entitled to complimentary access to the website and will be able to use the “Submit new contribution” link at the bottom of each page for a language or country in order to propose corrections and additions.
On Mother Language Day, we hope you will be able to find your mother language (or perhaps that of one of your ancestors) in the Ethnologue and celebrate the linguistic diversity that enriches our world.