Languages

In the 17th edition, the Ethnologue has deliberately moved away from the official/national distinction in the description of language status, on the grounds that such distinctions are often inconsistently applied from country to country and thus lead to considerable confusion. The categorizations that we now use focus on two facets of language status: the "health" of the language as more fully described by the EGIDS scale, and the function or functions of the language within that country.

The exact number of unwritten languages is hard to determine. Ethnologue (17th edition) has data to indicate that of the currently listed 7,105 living languages, 3,570 have a developed writing system.  We don't always know, however, if the existing writing systems are widely used.  That is, while an alphabet may exist there may not be very many people who are literate and actually using the alphabet. We have data to indicate that 696 languages are unwritten.  And for the remaining  2,839 languages we have no data.

EGIDS stands for the Expanded Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale.  This is a tool that is used to measure the status of a language in terms of endangerment or development.  See Language Status for more information; see Endangerment for information on how this scale relates to endangered languages.

This is a result of the introduction of EGIDS in the 17th edition. The 188 languages that have been placed in the Dormant category (EGIDS 9) were counted as extinct in the previous edition, but are now being distinguished from Extinct (EGIDS 10) and counted as living. In many cases there are revitalization efforts underway to preserve and even revive these languages as part of the heritage of living ethnic communities.  While there may be no fully proficient speakers, these languages cannot be accurately identified as extinct.

There are 1,535 living languages with less than 1,000 first-language speakers.  There are 478 with less than 100 speakers, and 135 with less than 10 speakers.

Both extinct languages and dormant languages no longer have any fully-proficient L1 users.  The Ethnologue makes a distinction between the two, however, to reflect the differences that exist in the sociolinguistic status of these languages without users. Although a dormant language is not used for daily life, there is an ethnic community that associates itself with a dormant language and view the language as a symbol of that community's identity.  Though a dormant language has no proficient users, it retains some social uses.