58-665: Downland , Downs , or The Downs may refer to: In the 'hill' context, the word 'down' derives from Celtic (Gaelic or Welsh) dun "hill, hill fort". Celtic languages Pontic Steppe Caucasus East Asia Eastern Europe Northern Europe Pontic Steppe Northern/Eastern Steppe Europe South Asia Steppe Europe Caucasus India Indo-Aryans Iranians East Asia Europe East Asia Europe Indo-Aryan Iranian Indo-Aryan Iranian Others European The Celtic languages ( / ˈ k ɛ l t ɪ k / KEL -tik ) are
116-538: A macrolanguage consisting of two distinct languages, Twi and Fante , whereas Ethnologue considers Twi and Fante to be dialects of a single language (Akan), since they are mutually intelligible. This anomaly resulted because the ISO 639-2 standard has separate codes for Twi and Fante, which have separate literary traditions, and all 639-2 codes for individual languages are automatically part of 639-3, even though 639-3 would not normally assign them separate codes. In 2014, with
174-424: A 2021 review of Ethnologue and Glottolog, linguist Shobhana Chelliah noted that "For better or worse, the impact of the site is indeed considerable. [...] Clearly, the site has influence on the field of linguistics and beyond." She added that she, among other linguists, integrated Ethnologue in her linguistics classes." The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics uses Ethnologue as its primary source for
232-614: A branch of the Indo-European language family , descended from Proto-Celtic . The term "Celtic" was first used to describe this language group by Edward Lhuyd in 1707, following Paul-Yves Pezron , who made the explicit link between the Celts described by classical writers and the Welsh and Breton languages. During the first millennium BC, Celtic languages were spoken across much of Europe and central Anatolia . Today, they are restricted to
290-466: A common Italo-Celtic subfamily. This hypothesis fell somewhat out of favour after reexamination by American linguist Calvert Watkins in 1966. Irrespectively, some scholars such as Ringe, Warnow and Taylor and many others have argued in favour of an Italo-Celtic grouping in 21st century theses. Although there are many differences between the individual Celtic languages, they do show many family resemblances. Examples: The lexical similarity between
348-448: A country. From this edition, Ethnologue includes data about first and second languages of refugees , temporary foreign workers and immigrants. In 2021, the 24th edition had 7,139 modern languages, an increase of 22 living languages from the 23rd edition. Editors especially improved data about language shift in this edition. In 2022, the 25th edition listed a total of 7,151 living languages, an increase of 12 living languages from
406-462: A highly valuable catalogue of the world's languages that "has become the standard reference" and whose "usefulness is hard to overestimate". They concluded that Ethnologue was "truly excellent, highly valuable, and the very best book of its sort available." In a review of Ethnologue 's 2009 edition in Ethnopolitics , Richard O. Collin , professor of politics, noted that " Ethnologue has become
464-694: A metered paywall to cover its cost, as it is financially self-sustaining. Users in high-income countries who wanted to refer to more than seven pages of data per month had to buy a paid subscription . The 18th edition released that year included a new section on language policy country by country. In 2016, Ethnologue added date about language planning agencies to the 19th edition. As of 2017, Ethnologue 's 20th edition described 237 language families including 86 language isolates and six typological categories, namely sign languages , creoles , pidgins , mixed languages , constructed languages , and as yet unclassified languages . The early focus of
522-481: A rich literary tradition . The earliest specimens of written Celtic are Lepontic inscriptions from the 6th century BC in the Alps. Early Continental inscriptions used Italic and Paleohispanic scripts. Between the 4th and 8th centuries, Irish and Pictish were occasionally written in an original script, Ogham , but Latin script came to be used for all Celtic languages. Welsh has had a continuous literary tradition from
580-455: A scientific perspective. He concluded: " Ethnologue is at present still better than any other nonderivative work of the same scope. [It] is an impressively comprehensive catalogue of world languages, and it is far superior to anything else produced prior to 2009. In particular, it is superior by virtue of being explicit." According to Hammarström, as of 2016, Ethnologue and Glottolog are the only global-scale continually maintained inventories of
638-470: A single language depends upon sociolinguistic evaluation by various scholars; as the preface to Ethnologue states, "Not all scholars share the same set of criteria for what constitutes a 'language' and what features define a ' dialect '." The criteria used by Ethnologue are mutual intelligibility and the existence or absence of a common literature or ethnolinguistic identity. The number of languages identified has been steadily increasing, from 5,445 in
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#1732837758952696-582: A standard resource for scholars in the other social sciences: anthropologists, economists, sociologists and, obviously, sociolinguists". According to Collin, Ethnologue is "stronger in languages spoken by indigenous peoples in economically less-developed portions of the world" and "when recent in-depth country-studies have been conducted, information can be very good; unfortunately [...] data are sometimes old". In 2012, linguist Asya Pereltsvaig described Ethnologue as "a reasonably good source of thorough and reliable geographical and demographic information about
754-522: A team of editors by geographical area who prepare reports to Ethnologue's general editor. These reports combine opinions from SIL area experts and feedback solicited from non-SIL linguists. Editors have to find compromises when opinions differ. Most of SIL's linguists have taken three to four semesters of graduate linguistics courses, and half of them have a master's degree. They're trained by 300 PhD linguists in SIL. The determination of what characteristics define
812-523: Is almost certainly an independent branch on the Celtic genealogical tree, one that became separated from the others very early." The Breton language is Brittonic, not Gaulish, though there may be some input from the latter, having been introduced from Southwestern regions of Britain in the post-Roman era and having evolved into Breton. In the P/Q classification schema, the first language to split off from Proto-Celtic
870-562: Is an official language of Ireland and of the European Union . Welsh is the only Celtic language not classified as endangered by UNESCO . The Cornish and Manx languages became extinct in modern times but have been revived. Each now has several hundred second-language speakers. Irish, Manx and Scottish Gaelic form the Goidelic languages , while Welsh, Cornish and Breton are Brittonic . All of these are Insular Celtic languages , since Breton,
928-518: Is listed as a language. In addition to choosing a primary name for a language, Ethnologue provides listings of other name(s) for the language and any dialects that are used by its speakers, government, foreigners and neighbors. Also included are any names that have been commonly referenced historically, regardless of whether a name is considered official, politically correct or offensive; this allows more complete historic research to be done. These lists of names are not necessarily complete. Ethnologue
986-591: Is still quite contested, and the main argument for Insular Celtic is connected with the development of verbal morphology and the syntax in Irish and British Celtic, which Schumacher regards as convincing, while he considers the P-Celtic/Q-Celtic division unimportant and treats Gallo-Brittonic as an outdated theory. Stifter affirms that the Gallo-Brittonic view is "out of favour" in the scholarly community as of 2008 and
1044-622: The Bible in each language and dialect described, religious affiliations of speakers, a cursory description of revitalization efforts where reported, intelligibility and lexical similarity with other dialects and languages, writing scripts, an estimate of language viability using the Expanded Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale (EGIDS), and bibliographic resources. Coverage varies depending on languages. For instance, as of 2008, information on word order
1102-493: The World Bank are eligible for free access and there are discounts for libraries and independent researchers. Subscribers are mostly institutions: 40% of the world's top 50 universities subscribe to Ethnologue , and it is also sold to business intelligence firms and Fortune 500 companies. The introduction of the paywall was harshly criticized by the community of linguists who rely on Ethnologue to do their work and cannot afford
1160-713: The living languages of the world. It is the world's most comprehensive catalogue of languages. It was first issued in 1951, and is now published by SIL International , an American evangelical Christian non-profit organization . Ethnologue has been published by SIL Global (formerly known as the Summer Institute of Linguistics), a Christian linguistic service organization with an international office in Dallas , Texas. The organization studies numerous minority languages to facilitate language development, and to work with speakers of such language communities in translating portions of
1218-425: The 10th edition (in 1984) to 6,909 in the 16th (in 2009), partly due to governments according designation as languages to mutually intelligible varieties and partly due to SIL establishing new Bible translation teams. Ethnologue codes were used as the base to create the new ISO 639-3 international standard. Since 2007, Ethnologue relies only on this standard, administered by SIL International, to determine what
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#17328377589521276-538: The 17th edition, Ethnologue introduced a numerical code for language status using a framework called EGIDS (Expanded Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale) , an elaboration of Fishman's GIDS ( Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale ). It ranks a language from 0 for an international language to 10 for an extinct language , i.e. a language with which no-one retains a sense of ethnic identity. In 2015, SIL's funds decreased and in December 2015, Ethnologue launched
1334-537: The 2000s led to the reemergence of native speakers for both languages following their adoption by adults and children. By the 21st century, there were roughly one million total speakers of Celtic languages, increasing to 1.4 million speakers by 2010. Gaelainn / Gaeilig / Gaeilic Celtic is divided into various branches: Scholarly handling of Celtic languages has been contentious owing to scarceness of primary source data. Some scholars (such as Cowgill 1975; McCone 1991, 1992; and Schrijver 1995) posit that
1392-490: The 24th edition. This edition specifically improved the use of languages in education . In 2023, the 26th edition listed a total of 7,168 living languages, an increase of 17 living languages from the 25th edition. In 2024, the 27th edition listed a total of 7,164 living languages, a decrease of 4 living languages from the 26th edition. In 1986, William Bright , then editor of the journal Language , wrote of Ethnologue that it "is indispensable for any reference shelf on
1450-581: The 6th century AD. SIL Ethnologue lists six living Celtic languages, of which four have retained a substantial number of native speakers. These are: the Goidelic languages ( Irish and Scottish Gaelic , both descended from Middle Irish ) and the Brittonic languages ( Welsh and Breton , descended from Common Brittonic ). The other two, Cornish (Brittonic) and Manx (Goidelic), died out in modern times with their presumed last native speakers in 1777 and 1974 respectively. Revitalisation movements in
1508-553: The Bible into their languages. Despite the Christian orientation of its publisher, Ethnologue is not ideologically or theologically biased. Ethnologue includes alternative names and autonyms , the number of L1 and L2 speakers, language prestige , domains of use, literacy rates , locations, dialects, language classification , linguistic affiliations , typology , language maps, country maps, publication and use in media, availability of
1566-518: The Ethnologue was on native use (L1) but was gradually expanded to cover L2 use as well. In 2019, Ethnologue disabled trial views and introduced a hard paywall to cover its nearly $ 1 million in annual operating costs (website maintenance, security, researchers, and SIL's 5,000 field linguists). Subscriptions start at $ 480 per person per year, while full access costs $ 2,400 per person per year. Users in low and middle-income countries as defined by
1624-550: The Gallic and Brittonic languages are P-Celtic, while the Goidelic and Hispano-Celtic (or Celtiberian) languages are Q-Celtic. The P-Celtic languages (also called Gallo-Brittonic ) are sometimes seen (for example by Koch 1992) as a central innovating area as opposed to the more conservative peripheral Q-Celtic languages. According to Ranko Matasovic in the introduction to his 2009 Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Celtic : "Celtiberian ...
1682-485: The Insular Celtic hypothesis "widely accepted". When referring only to the modern Celtic languages, since no Continental Celtic language has living descendants, "Q-Celtic" is equivalent to "Goidelic" and "P-Celtic" is equivalent to "Brittonic". How the family tree of the Celtic languages is ordered depends on which hypothesis is used: " Insular Celtic hypothesis " " P/Q-Celtic hypothesis " Eska evaluates
1740-461: The Insular Celtic languages were probably not in great enough contact for those innovations to spread as part of a sprachbund . However, if they have another explanation (such as an SOV substratum language), then it is possible that P-Celtic is a valid clade, and the top branching would be: Within the Indo-European family, the Celtic languages have sometimes been placed with the Italic languages in
1798-487: The Larzac piece of lead (1983), the analysis of which reveals another common phonetical innovation -nm- > -nu (Gaelic ainm / Gaulish anuana , Old Welsh enuein 'names'), that is less accidental than only one. The discovery of a third common innovation would allow the specialists to come to the conclusion of a Gallo-Brittonic dialect (Schmidt 1986; Fleuriot 1986). The interpretation of this and further evidence
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1856-454: The P-/Q-Celtic hypothesis. Proponents of each schema dispute the accuracy and usefulness of the other's categories. However, since the 1970s the division into Insular and Continental Celtic has become the more widely held view (Cowgill 1975; McCone 1991, 1992; Schrijver 1995), but in the middle of the 1980s, the P-/Q-Celtic theory found new supporters (Lambert 1994), because of the inscription on
1914-530: The break-up much earlier at 3200 BC ± 1500 years. They support the Insular Celtic hypothesis. The early Celts were commonly associated with the archaeological Urnfield culture , the Hallstatt culture , and the La Tène culture , though the earlier assumption of association between language and culture is now considered to be less strong. There are legitimate scholarly arguments for both the Insular Celtic hypothesis and
1972-471: The date when last fluent speaker of the language died, standardized the age range of language users, and improved the EGIDS estimates. In 2020, the 23rd edition listed 7,117 living languages, an increase of 6 living languages from the 22nd edition. In this edition, Ethnologue expanded its coverage of immigrant languages : previous editions only had full entries for languages considered to be "established" within
2030-484: The different Celtic languages is apparent in their core vocabulary , especially in terms of actual pronunciation . Moreover, the phonetic differences between languages are often the product of regular sound change (i.e. lenition of /b/ into /v/ or Ø). SIL Ethnologue Ethnologue: Languages of the World is an annual reference publication in print and online that provides statistics and other information on
2088-474: The evidence as supporting the following tree, based on shared innovations , though it is not always clear that the innovations are not areal features . It seems likely that Celtiberian split off before Cisalpine Celtic, but the evidence for this is not robust. On the other hand, the unity of Gaulish, Goidelic, and Brittonic is reasonably secure. Schumacher (2004, p. 86) had already cautiously considered this grouping to be likely genetic, based, among others, on
2146-699: The lack of references, Ethnologue added in 2013 a link on each language to language resources from the Open Language Archives Community (OLAC) Ethnologue acknowledges that it rarely quotes any source verbatim but cites sources wherever specific statements are directly attributed to them, and corrects missing attributions upon notification. The website provides a list of all of the references cited. In her 2021 review, Shobhana Chelliah noted that Glottolog aims to be better than Ethnologue in language classification and genetic and areal relationships by using linguists' original sources. Starting with
2204-414: The languages of the world". The 2003 International Encyclopedia of Linguistics described Ethnologue as "a comprehensive listing of the world's languages, with genetic classification", and follows Ethnologue's classification. In 2005, linguists Lindsay J. Whaley and Lenore Grenoble considered that Ethnologue "continues to provide the most comprehensive and reliable count of numbers of speakers of
2262-857: The level of endangerment in languages around the world." The US National Science Foundation uses Ethnologue to determine which languages are endangered. According to Hammarström et al., Ethnologue is, as of 2022, one of the three global databases documenting language endangerment with the Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger and the Catalogue of Endangered Languages (ELCat). The University of Hawaii Kaipuleohone language archive uses Ethnologue 's metadata as well. The World Atlas of Language Structures uses Ethnologue 's genealogical classification. The Rosetta Project uses Ethnologue 's language metadata. In 2005, linguist Harald Hammarström wrote that Ethnologue
2320-488: The list of languages and language maps. According to linguist Suzanne Romaine , Ethnologue is also the leading source for research on language diversity . According to The Oxford Handbook of Language and Society , Ethnologue is "the standard reference source for the listing and enumeration of Endangered Languages, and for all known and "living" languages of the world"." Similarly, linguist David Bradley describes Ethnologue as "the most comprehensive effort to document
2378-455: The northwestern fringe of Europe and a few diaspora communities . There are six living languages: the four continuously living languages Breton , Irish , Scottish Gaelic and Welsh , and the two revived languages Cornish and Manx . All are minority languages in their respective countries, though there are continuing efforts at revitalisation . Welsh is an official language in Wales and Irish
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2436-638: The only comprehensive sources of information about language populations and that Ethnologue had more specific information. They concluded that: "the language statistics available today in the form of the Ethnologue population counts are already good enough to be useful" According to linguist William Poser , Ethnologue was, as of 2006, the "best single source of information" on language classification. In 2008 linguists Lyle Campbell and Verónica Grondona highly commended Ethnologue in Language . They described it as
2494-407: The only living Celtic language spoken in continental Europe, is descended from the language of settlers from Britain. There are a number of extinct but attested continental Celtic languages , such as Celtiberian , Galatian and Gaulish . Beyond that there is no agreement on the subdivisions of the Celtic language family. They may be divided into P-Celtic and Q-Celtic . The Celtic languages have
2552-461: The primary distinction is between Continental Celtic and Insular Celtic , arguing that the differences between the Goidelic and Brittonic languages arose after these split off from the Continental Celtic languages. Other scholars (such as Schmidt 1988) make the primary distinction between P-Celtic and Q-Celtic languages based on the replacement of initial Q by initial P in some words. Most of
2610-504: The scope of other existing standards, e.g. ISO 639-1 and ISO 639-2 . The 14th edition, published in 2000, included 7,148 language codes. In 2002, Ethnologue was asked to work with the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) to integrate its codes into a draft international standard. Ethnologue codes have then been adopted by ISO as the international standard, ISO 639-3 . The 15th edition of Ethnologue
2668-487: The shared reformation of the sentence-initial, fully inflecting relative pronoun *i̯os, *i̯ā, *i̯od into an uninflected enclitic particle. Eska sees Cisalpine Gaulish as more akin to Lepontic than to Transalpine Gaulish. Eska considers a division of Transalpine–Goidelic–Brittonic into Transalpine and Insular Celtic to be most probable because of the greater number of innovations in Insular Celtic than in P-Celtic, and because
2726-485: The subscription The same year, Ethnologue launched its contributor program to fill gaps and improve accuracy, allowing contributors to submit corrections and additions and to get a complimentary access to the website. Ethnologue 's editors gradually review crowdsourced contributions before publication. As 2019 was the International Year of Indigenous Languages , this edition focused on language loss : it added
2784-536: The world's languages", still they recognize that "individual language surveys may have far more accurate counts for a specific language, but The Ethnologue is unique in bringing together speaker statistics on a global scale". In 2006, computational linguists John C. Paolillo and Anupam Das conducted a systematic evaluation of available information on language populations for the UNESCO Institute for Statistics . They reported that Ethnologue and Linguasphere were
2842-556: The world's languages". She added in 2021 that its maps "are generally fairly accurate although they often depict the linguistic situation as it once was or as someone might imagine it to be but not as it actually is". Linguist George Tucker Childs wrote in 2012 that: " Ethnologue is the most widely referenced source for information on languages of the world", but he added that regarding African languages, "when evaluated against recent field experience [Ethnologue] seems at least out of date". In 2014, Ethnologue admitted that some of its data
2900-656: The world's languages. The main difference is that Ethnologue includes additional information (such as speaker numbers or vitality) but lacks systematic sources for the information given. In contrast, Glottolog provides no language context information but points to primary sources for further data. Contrary to Ethnologue , Glottolog does not run its own surveys, but it uses Ethnologue as one of its primary sources. As of 2019, Hammarström uses Ethnologue in his articles, noting that it "has (unsourced, but) detailed information associated with each speech variety, such as speaker numbers and map location". In response to feedback about
2958-624: Was "the best source that list the non-endangered languages of the world". Lyle Campbell and Russell Barlow also noted that the 2017 edition of Ethnologue "improved [its] classification markedly". They note that Ethnologue 's genealogy is similar to that of the World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS) but different from that of the Catalogue of Endangered Languages (ELCat) and Glottolog. Linguist Lisa Matthewson commented in 2020 that Ethnologue offers "accurate information about speaker numbers". In
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#17328377589523016-711: Was Gaelic. It has characteristics that some scholars see as archaic, but others see as also being in the Brittonic languages (see Schmidt). In the Insular/Continental classification schema, the split of the former into Gaelic and Brittonic is seen as being late. The distinction of Celtic into these four sub-families most likely occurred about 900 BC according to Gray & Atkinson but, because of estimation uncertainty, it could be any time between 1200 and 800 BC. However, they only considered Gaelic and Brythonic. A controversial paper by Forster & Toth included Gaulish and put
3074-432: Was consistent with specialist views most of the time and was a catalog "of very high absolute value and by far the best of its kind". In 2011, Hammarström created Glottolog in response to the lack of a comprehensive language bibliography, especially in Ethnologue . In 2015, Hammarström reviewed the 16th, 17th, and 18th editions of Ethnologue and described the frequent lack of citations as its only "serious fault" from
3132-628: Was created in 1971 at the University of Oklahoma under a grant from the National Science Foundation . In 1974 the database was moved to Cornell University . Since 2000, the database has been maintained by SIL International in their Dallas headquarters. In 1997 (13th edition), the website became the primary means of access. In 1984, Ethnologue released a three-letter coding system, called an 'SIL code', to identify each language that it described. This set of codes significantly exceeded
3190-422: Was founded in 1951 by Richard S. Pittman and was initially focused on minority languages, to share information on Bible translation needs. The first edition included information on 46 languages. Hand-drawn maps were introduced in the fourth edition (1953). The seventh edition (1969) listed 4,493 languages. In 1971, Ethnologue expanded its coverage to all known languages of the world. Ethnologue database
3248-672: Was out-of-date and switched from a four-year publication cycle (in print and online) to yearly online updates. In 2017, Robert Phillipson and Tove Skutnabb-Kangas described Ethnologue as "the most comprehensive global source list for (mostly oral) languages". According to the 2018 Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics , Ethnologue is a "comprehensive, frequently updated [database] on languages and language families'. According to quantitative linguists Simon Greenhill , Ethnologue offers, as of 2018, "sufficiently accurate reflections of speaker population size". Linguists Lyle Campbell and Kenneth Lee Rehg wrote in 2018 that Ethnologue
3306-562: Was present for 15% of entries while religious affiliations were mentioned for 38% of languages. According to Lyle Campbell "language maps are highly valuable" and most country maps are of high quality and user-friendly. Ethnologue gathers information from SIL's thousands of field linguists , surveys done by linguists and literacy specialists, observations of Bible translators , and crowdsourced contributions. SIL's field linguists use an online collaborative research system to review current data, update it, or request its removal. SIL has
3364-442: Was the first edition to use this standard. This standard is now administered separately from Ethnologue. SIL International is the registration authority for languages names and codes, according to rules established by ISO. Since then Ethnologue relies on the standard to determine what is listed as a language. In only one case, Ethnologue and the ISO standards treat languages slightly differently. ISO 639-3 considers Akan to be
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