SINCE 1951

A reference for making informed decisions in every language context worldwide. We invite you to join us in celebrating the International Decade of Indigenous Languages.

Languages of the World

  • Geography

    Clickable world globe showing country outlines
  • Demographics

    7.668 billion people

    7,164 languages

    430 million deaf

    86% literate

  • Language Vitality Count

    1. 492
    2. 3593
    3. 3072
    4. 451
  • 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.

  • "Global Voice" Initiative

    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.

Scripts used in the languages of the world

Meet more contributors.

  • contributor photo

    Nate Cheeseman

    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.

  • contributor photo

    Antoine Dusséaux

    Antoine has been a contributor since 2021 and has contributed 672 times. Antoine is a language enthusiast and active contributor to Ethnologue and Wikipedia.

  • contributor photo

    Renhard Saupia

    Renhard has been a contributor since 2019 and has contributed 48 times. Renhard is focused on the languages of Indonesia.

  • contributor photo

    Jean Pacquement

    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.

Read how to interpret Code Tables.