the World

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How many children lack access to education in their first language?
Learning is crucial to human flourishing. However, research shows that more than one third of the world's children spend their school days in classrooms where the language of instruction is not the language they use at home.
How many languages are there in the world?
Thousands of languages are spoken today. We dig into exactly how many there are, where they're from, their average size, and the 10 countries with the most languages.
What is the most spoken language?
We factor in both native and non-native speakers to determine the largest language in the world. Also includes our current list of the world's four most spoken languages.

Welcome to the 25th edition
As our contribution to the celebration of International Mother Language Day, we are pleased to announce the release of the 25th edition of Ethnologue.
Nailing Jello to the Wall: Language Identification
The Ethnologue deals with the languages of the world, so it would seem to be important that we be able to say what we mean when we refer to "a language".
Why are Sign Languages Included in the Ethnologue?
Sign languages are not in the same category as all the other languages in Ethnologue, people say to me. What is the reason they are included right along with spoken languages?

Scripts used in the languages of the World

Antoine Dusséaux
Antoine has been a contributor since 2021 and has contributed 394 times. Antoine is a language enthusiast and active contributor to Ethnologue and Wikipedia.
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.
Renhard Saupia
Renhard has been a contributor since 2019 and has contributed 48 times. Renhard is focused on the languages of Indonesia.
Simon Malesan-Jordaney
Simon has been a contributor since 2022 and has contributed 15 times. Simon is a native speaker of Arpitan.

Read how to interpret Code Tables.