A language becomes endangered when its users begin to teach and speak a more dominant language to their children. We look at the number of endangered languages in the world today.
More than 7,000 languages are spoken today. We explore exactly how many there are, their geographic distribution, and compare endangered languages with the world's largest languages.
We factor in both native and non-native speakers to determine the largest language in the world. Also included is our current list of the world's four most spoken languages.
At a Glance
Geography
Clickable world globe showing country outlines
Demographics
7.668 billion
people
7,164
languages
430 million
deaf
86%
literate
Language Vitality Count
492
3593
3072
451
Details
This graph shows the profile of languages in the world with respect to their level of language vitality.
Institutional — The language has been developed to the point that it is used and sustained by institutions beyond the home and community.
Stable — The language is not being sustained by formal institutions, but it is still the norm in the home and community that all children learn and use the language.
Endangered — It is no longer the norm that children learn and use this language.
Extinct - The language is no longer used and no one retains a sense of ethnic identity associated with the language.
These four summary levels have been derived by grouping levels in the Expanded Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale (EGIDS), which is the more fine-grained scale that Ethnologue uses to assess the status of every language in terms of development versus endangerment; see Language Status for a description of the levels of that scale. See also the pages on Development and Endangerment for more discussion.
The Global Voice (GV) initiative is a program launched by Ethnologue to improve the quality of the data that is available on the language ecologies of the world.
Nate has been a contributor since 2010 and has contributed over 2800 times. Nate has been a minority language researcher for over 19 years and is focused on the languages of Southeast Asia.
Antoine has been a contributor since 2021 and has contributed 672 times. Antoine is a language enthusiast and active contributor to Ethnologue and Wikipedia.
Jean has been a contributor since 2021 and has contributed 36 times. Jean has been a minority language researcher for over 30 years and is focused on the Tai languages of Southeast Asia.
