Introducing Ethnologue Guides

How many languages are there in the world?

If you're familiar with the Ethnologue, you already know that the answer is in the thousands. But what does that really look like? Where are these languages? How many people speak them? What does it mean to live in a world with thousands of languages?

Today we're launching "Guides,” which will explore questions just like this. Each guide uses a combination of text, maps, and charts to unpack a specific topic that’s important to understanding how language fits in our world today.

Our first guide deals with the question that opened this blog: How many languages are there? We walk you through the topic in a single place, covering everything from the one-sentence answer ("7,097 languages are spoken today") to a detailed look at related statistics. We hope you find them useful!

We'll be releasing new guides over time, as well as updating them with new statistics every year. As with our data pages, viewing each guide counts toward your seven free pages on Ethnologue.com. (Want more data? Simply subscribe here.)

Take a look, share them with your friends, and let us know what you think! We'd also love to hear which topics you'd be interested in reading about in future guides.