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As of yesterday, we no longer limit access to Ethnologue.com based on page count.
As we enter 2016, the Ethnologue staff and all of us at SIL International wish you the happiest of New Years and many blessings and goodwill in the months ahead.
What is EGIDS? How is it used?
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.
As I have mentioned a few times in the past, the Ethnologue represents three generations of ongoing research. This project has involved thousands of linguists over the years from SIL International, from partner organizations, and from many, many individuals.
I've been away from Ethnologue Central for several weeks now, not exactly on holiday, but certainly having a wonderfully productive time. Most of this extended trip has involved significant events related to the Ethnologue.
After the holiday break, Ethnologue Central has burst into a flurry of activity. Here are some of the things that we are working on.
In the 16th edition, the Ethnologue added an evaluation of the vitality status of each language using the EGIDS, our own scale. I wrote about that at length here last year.
How many languages in the world are unwritten?
The exact number of unwritten languages is hard to determine. Ethnologue (23rd edition) has data to indicate that of the currently listed 7,117 living languages, 3,982 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. The remaining 3,135 are likely unwritten.
In the first posting to this blog, I mentioned that one of the new features of this edition of the Ethnologue (17th) is the addition of a status category for each language.
