Ethnologue Languages of the World

August 8, 2000 12:48 AM

Ethnologue Languages of the World is a comprehensive online resource detailing all of the languages spoken in the world today. It has indexes based on language name, language family and country as well as a search facility. Also covered are creoles and deaf sign languages.
posted by lagado (10 comments total)

Ethnologue is the expansive, amazing work of committed Bible translators. SIL International (formerly The Summer Institute of Linguistics) trains and ships out thousands of volunteers to all parts of the world for the purpose of study the languages and cultures of all societies. They promote preservation of traditional culture and language, yet the initial purpose of data collection is to translate the Bible into all languages. Go figure.
posted by rschram at 5:30 AM on August 8, 2000

Wow, and I missed that completely. Those pesky missionaries again!
posted by lagado at 7:18 AM on August 8, 2000

The weirdest thing about SIL, and I guess also a testament to their hard work (you can tell I'm really ambivalent about them) is that if you do a search on a most any language, a link to Ethnologue is certain to come up somewhere in there, often first. You can't beat that online presence with a stick.
posted by rschram at 8:29 AM on August 8, 2000

Oh, and I didn't mean to point out that the fact that Ethnologue is written by a quasi-missionary organization, it diminshes the value of Ethnologue or your link. It's just a little known fact that I find kind of funny.
posted by rschram at 8:32 AM on August 8, 2000

Testament? *groan*
posted by harmful at 8:44 AM on August 8, 2000

Oh, heh... Oops.
posted by rschram at 8:54 AM on August 8, 2000

The info on Ireland is a bit incomplete.


> Western isles northwest and southwest coasts;
> Galway, part of Mayo, Kerry, Donegal. Also Northern
> Ireland,

These are Gaeltacht (pronounced gwayltocht) areas - the largest ones. There are more all over the country.

Tá mé ábalta ag caint as Gailge, agus tá mé imo chonaí i mBaile Áth Clíath :-)
(I am able to speak in Irish, and I live in Dublin)

We can all speak at least bit of Irish because of school, but there are Gaeltacht areas all over the country, not only the ones mentioned above (thought they'd be the bigger ones). Kids go to summer school in them - Irish only - speak English more than three times and you're sent home. No one that I know of learns English as a second language now. The closest I can think of are people from the Gaeltacht areas who are living in families who have fluent command of both English and Irish, but choose to speak Irish as a day to day language.

> Boston, USA.

Boston? Does that count, it's only spoken by immigrants as opposed to native speakers and it's not spoken much. If they're gonna add in Boston, they also need to add New York and Chicago and all the other cities on the planet that the Irish are living in in large numbers (I'm thinking of Australia).

Dialects: MUNSTER, CONNACHT, DONEGAL, LEINSTER, ULSTER.

Donegal is Ulster - the same language, just different accents. My grandmother speaks it fluently. Ulster is very similar to Scots Gaelic.

> It is taught as an official language in schools and encouraged by the government.

Not only that, Irish is our first language, but we are speaking English because of British rule down through the centuries. All road signs are in Irish first, with English in a smaller typeface. My birth certificate lists me as "Tomás Pdraig MacOscair" (pronounced "to-maws pawd-rig mac-uscar") and seconly as Thomas Patrick Cosgrave. My drivers licence and passport is the same - Irish first, English second. If yiz like I'll do a scan for ya ;-)

PS. Like you all really needed to know this ;-)
PPS. My grammar is probably way wrong!
posted by tomcosgrave at 11:18 AM on August 9, 2000

The Irish have been converted to something already, so it's less of a priority.
posted by rschram at 1:04 PM on August 9, 2000

What's that meant to mean, if I may ask?
posted by tomcosgrave at 2:54 AM on August 10, 2000

It's less of a priority to translate the Bible into all of the different languages in Ireland.
posted by rschram at 6:06 AM on August 10, 2000