Ethnologue: Languages of the World

Preface to the Web Version

This electronic version of Ethnologue: Languages of the World presents the data used to prepare the printed volumes, along with links to the SIL Bibliography and the International Academic Bookstore.

To get started using the Ethnologue, you should first read the Introduction. Then browse the Countries page, which displays the primary table of contents for the Ethnologue organized by geographical areas and countries, or use the search function.

A country page contains descriptions of all the languages spoken in that country. Be forewarned that some of the files are quite large. Many languages are spoken in more than one country, and thus have entries listed at more than one country. To look up all the entries for a particular language, click on the More Information link; you will be presented with a list of other countries where the language is spoken and links to the bibliographic details of publications written about that language. For volumes that are available for sale through the International Academic Bookstore, there is ordering information in the full bibliographic entry.