Welcome to the 27th edition

As our contribution to the celebration of International Mother Language Day, we are pleased to announce the release of the 27th 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 15,000 updates that have been made to the Ethnologue database since the 26th edition was released one year ago. The descriptions of 2,456 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 7,164 living languages worldwide—a net decrease of 4 living languages since the previous edition of Ethnologue was published one year ago. This change was due solely to changes in the extinction status of some languages. In a typical year we also make changes to keep Ethnologue aligned with the ISO 639-3 inventory of languages, but 2023 was an exception in this respect. There were no such changes since the ISO 639-3 change request process was on hiatus during the final stages of revising the ISO 639 standard and transferring management of ISO 639-3 from a Registration Authority to a Maintenance Agency. The ISO 639/MA is now functioning and changes to the standard will resume being made in 2024.

This edition also incorporates a number of improvements to the language maps. These include two new maps showing the range of vehicular language use in Indonesia within Java and Bali and within Sumatra, the replacement of a single map for Botswana with a pair of maps at a finer scale for northern and southern Botswana, and three new maps showing enlarged areas of Angola, Burkina Faso, and Democratic Republic of the Congo.

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.