Ethnologue (“Ethnologist”; full name - Ethnologue: Languages of the World - “Ethnologist: Languages of the World”) is the most famous directory of languages of the world , developed and published by SIL International (formerly known as Summer Institute of Linguistics - “Summer Institute of Linguistics” ») In print and electronic form.
For a long time, the chief editor of Ethnologist was Barbara F. Grimes , who held this position from 1971 to 2000; then Raymond G. Gordon (Jr. ) became the chief editor of Ethnologist. Barbara Grimes died on March 1, 2014. And Raymond Gordon is still alive.
Starting from 2015 (from the 18th edition), the new edition of Ethnologist is published annually and is timed to coincide with the International Mother Language Day (February 21) [1] . The 22nd edition of the ethnologist, released in 2019, contains information on 7111 living languages of the world [2] . Brief information is provided about each language: name options, number of speakers, area, dialect composition, classification, etc. In addition, linguistic maps are provided for most countries, the quality of which varies greatly. The ethnologist also produces country jigs in more than eight languages. And publishes books.
To watch cards that are individual for each language. Paid subscription required. Maps for the regions can be viewed for free, but they can also be bought and printed.
The ethnologist uses a special scale to determine whether the language is safe or dying. The scale has five categories of use for living languages. And one for languages that have ceased to speak from 1950 onwards. The colors of these categories of languages are top-down use:
Violet - Institutional.
Blue - developing.
Green - energetic.
Yellow is in trouble.
Reds are dying.
Black - became extinct from 1950 onwards.
The first category includes installation languages that are used almost everywhere in education, at work, on television, on the radio and in government. The second category includes developing languages. Everyone also speaks these languages, but they are not used everywhere. The third category includes energetic languages, they are also spoken by all generations, but they remain in the shadow of more well-known languages. The fourth category includes languages in trouble. That is, they continue to speak them, but a language shift begins. A language shift is a process when less and less youth and children speak a language. And he begins to die out. The fifth category includes languages spoken only by people who are older than childbearing age. The sixth category includes languages that have become extinct since 1950 and the following years. There are currently 22 editions of an ethnologist. To date, the most recent edition has been released in 2019. The ethnologist’s scale is also divided into eleven subcategories.
The first edition of the ethnologist was released in 1952. The first edition of the ethnologist included information on only forty languages, but the ethnologist's team continued to work for many years. Finally, the 22nd edition of 2019 contained information on 7111 languages.
But in addition to the language safety scale, the ethnologist has another scale that combines the first scale and the number of speakers. The essence of the scale is that the points that are colored depending on the location of the tongue in the first scale. It also indicates the number of speakers in the conflict with a subgroup of the language in which the language is located. If the number of speakers is unknown, then a question mark is placed instead of a dot. Which is painted on the same principle as the point for languages whose number of speakers is known.
Each edition of the ethnologist makes thousands of individual changes for thousands of languages of the world. For example, in the 22nd edition of the ethnologist, more than twenty thousand changes were made. And at least in two more editions of the ethnologist, not including the 22nd edition, more than twenty thousand changes were made in each. And in the 19th edition there were more than 19,000 changes.
Content
SIL Code
In 1984, the Ethnologist first used the SIL index system, called the SIL code ( SIL code ), to uniquely identify languages (but not dialects or language groups). Initially, these indexes were developed independently of other language identifier systems, but in 2002 this system was chosen by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) to develop an international language code system that is compatible with previous ISO standards ( ISO 639-1 and ISO 639-2 ). This system, called ISO 639-3 , is used, in particular, in the Ethnologist itself (from the 15th edition) and includes 7467 indices [3] . Each index consists of three lowercase (until 2002 - uppercase) letters of the Latin alphabet . Often the letters of the index correspond to the name of the language, however, due to understandable restrictions imposed by the number of letters, this is not always the case.
Work structure; amount of information for each language
Although the genetic classification of languages is used in this work, the main part of the book is built on the political-geographical principle: the sections are countries, and then articles on languages are listed in alphabetical order. One language can occur several times (one of the countries is nevertheless considered the main language). For each language, its place in the classification of languages, which is entirely given as an appendix, is indicated. The genetic classification of languages reaches only the level of reliably reconstructed associations: for example, the number of associations in America reaches 60, and in the rest of the world there are only 34. Moreover, a large number of languages fall into either a group of isolated or a group of unclassified languages.
The bulk of the “Ethnologist” is organized by country (228 countries in total). For each country, a brief summary is provided first:
- population of the country;
- the full official name in English and in the official language of the country;
- capital;
- square;
- Literacy Rate;
- a list of immigrant languages with the number of speakers in a given country (this also includes languages for which only the number of speakers is known, if more detailed information about them is given under another country);
- the degree of data accuracy for the entire country (mainly regarding mutual understanding and verification of information by linguists) on a four-point scale;
- major religions;
- the number of blind and deaf and the number of institutions for them;
- the total number of languages (not including immigrant languages), including the number of living, dead and used only as a second language.
Then the languages are listed, for each of which the following brief information is given:
- main name
- three-letter identification code in square brackets;
- variants of names in brackets (in capital letters);
- the number of speakers, including monolinguals, bilinguals, and those for whom this is a second language;
- sources of information;
- number of carriers in other countries; number of carriers in all countries;
- approximate territory of distribution;
- classification;
- a list of dialects with variants of names (in capital letters);
- additional sociolinguistic information;
- Media and literature;
- education and literacy;
- degree of mutual understanding between dialects;
- type of writing;
- official status of the language;
- a brief typological description of the grammar (usually the basic word order);
- Braille
- main religion;
- Bible translation available.
However, for many languages a significant part of the information may be missing.
The names of groups of languages are given as they have developed in the linguistic tradition, based primarily on the encyclopedia The Oxford University Press International Encyclopedia of Linguistics (1992) edited by William Bright, as well as on later research in this area.
Language vs. dialect
The preface to the “Ethnologist” refers to a different understanding of the terms “language” and “dialect” among both native speakers and linguists . The authors themselves, based on the purposes of compiling this handbook (an auxiliary tool for Bible translators into other languages), strive to present as separate languages those idioms whose speakers can hardly read or speak another idiom without studying it specifically. That is, they proceed from the criterion of mutual understanding. In addition, some sociolinguistic factors are taken into account, for example, attitude to another language, self-identification of carriers and others.
Taxa and language names
The Ethnologist does not use any taxa other than the terms “language” and “dialect”. The names of language groups in the “tree-like” image of the CJC (in the “Appendix”) are given without an accompanying taxon and differ only in the size of the indent.
The description language in Ethnologist is English, so all names of languages and groups of languages are given in English. In this case, one of the English names is selected as the main one, while others are listed side by side in parentheses.
For each language (and to a lesser extent the dialect), in brackets after the main name are given alternative names in English and sometimes auto-lingvonim and names in other languages. All of them usually do not differentiate. Names that carry an offensive tint are enclosed in quotation marks. In the text itself, the name of the ethnic group is sometimes given if it is very different from the name of the language. All names are given only in the Latin script with a small set of diacritics (mainly used in Western European alphabets). Other scripts are not used.
Inclusion of dead, artificial languages, pidgin, sign languages
In addition to the genetic associations of languages, the Index of Linguistic Families contains an additional section, “Languages of Special Interest”, which lists isolated and unclassified languages; Pidgin and Creole languages ; sign languages; as well as categories such as Jewish and Gypsy .
Belonging to all these categories is indicated in the articles of the corresponding languages instead of genetic affiliation (except Jewish and Gypsy, which are indicated in addition to it).
The Ethnologist includes those dead languages that have become extinct only recently or occupy a special place within their family, or if they have a scripture translation. Dead languages are not included in the general statistics, but neither their list nor their number is given anywhere.
Notes
- ↑ M. Paul Lewis. Welcome to the 18st edition! : [ eng. ] // ethnologue.com . - 2018 .-- February 21. - Date of treatment: 03/09/2018.
- "Mother Language Day, February 21, reminds the world of the importance of the lesser-known languages of the world and that has been a particular area of focus of the Ethnologue since its inception. We're happy to be able to provide the most up-to-date information about the languages of the world on this day.
- Now that we are on an annual update cycle ... "
- "Mother Language Day, February 21, reminds the world of the importance of the lesser-known languages of the world and that has been a particular area of focus of the Ethnologue since its inception. We're happy to be able to provide the most up-to-date information about the languages of the world on this day.
- ↑ ethnologue.com : [ eng. ] // ethnologue.com . - 2019. - February 21. - Date of treatment: 03/09/2019.
- ↑ Downloading the Code Tables , LanguageCodes.tab file dated February 21, 2018