Welcome to the 26th edition

Gary Simons | February 21, 2023

As our contribution to the celebration of International Mother Language Day, we are pleased to announce the release of the 26th 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 25th edition was released one year ago. The descriptions of 2,875 languages contain at least one update. These include both substantive changes to the data, as well as stylistic ones as we continually seek to improve the presentation of the data.

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 7,168 living languages worldwide—a net increase of 17 living languages since the 25th edition of Ethnologue was published one year ago. This is the result of changes in the extinction status of some languages and of updating Ethnologue to keep it aligned with the ISO 639-3 inventory of languages. This edition drops 11 languages that were listed as living in the previous edition (8 being changed in status from living to extinct and 3 having been merged in the ISO standard into another language as being a dialect). Conversely, 28 languages are newly listed as living (12 having been shifted in status from extinct to dormant, 8 being split from existing languages, and 8 having been added by the ISO standard as not being previously identified).

The special focus of the editorial team for this new edition has been threefold. First, we have added an assessment of digital vitality to the description of every language. We report this as the position on a scale of five levels: Still, Emerging, Ascending, Vital, or Thriving. Our methodology is described in full in Assessing digital language support on a global scale. The assessment appears in the newly added Digital Support section on each language page. See Digital Support on the Methodology page for a summary of the method and a description of the scale levels.

Second, we have added entries for 101 extinct languages in the ISO 639-3 standard that were not already listed in Ethnologue. (This does not include languages that went out of use before recent centuries, which are classified in the standard as “historical”.) As a result of adding these languages, the set of languages covered in Ethnologue now includes all the languages considered in our study of Two centuries of spreading language loss.

Third, we completed the global survey of the use of languages in education that was begun in the previous edition. That edition introduced a more refined method of reporting on use of languages in education, but we had not yet updated the reporting for every country. That has now been done. Our current data indicate that 351 of the world’s languages are used as a language of basic curriculum, with an additional 336 being taught as a language subject.

This edition also incorporates a number of improvements to the language maps. These include a new set of continental maps which document the range of the deaf community sign languages in use in each continent. There are also new maps for Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mauritius, Reunion, Romania, São Tomé e Príncipe, and the Seychelles.

Along with these updates and improvements to the website, we have updated all of the country digests to reflect the 26th edition data. The global dataset is similarly updated. The 26th edition of the three print volumes will be released in short order.

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 Contribute tab on the 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.