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50-628: The ELP was launched in June 2012 with the intention of being a "comprehensive, up-to-date source of information on the endangered languages of the world" according to the director of the Catalogue of Endangered Languages (ELCat), Lyle Campbell , a professor of linguistics in the Mānoa College of Languages, Linguistics and Literature. He expressed that the "... Catalogue is needed to support documentation and revitalization of endangered languages, to inform

100-559: A " dead language ". If no one can speak the language at all, it becomes an " extinct language ". A dead language may still be studied through recordings or writings, but it is still dead or extinct unless there are fluent speakers. Although languages have always become extinct throughout human history, they are currently dying at an accelerated rate because of globalization , mass migration , cultural replacement, imperialism , neocolonialism and linguicide (language killing). Language shift most commonly occurs when speakers switch to

150-485: A community with special collective rights . Language can also be considered as scientific knowledge in topics such as medicine, philosophy, botany, and more. It reflects a community's practices when dealing with the environment and each other. When a language is lost, this knowledge is often lost as well. In contrast, language revitalization is correlated with better health outcomes in indigenous communities. During language loss—sometimes referred to as obsolescence in

200-427: A confidence level of 100%, while an LEI which uses only the speaker numbers and intergenerational transmission factor would have a confidence level of 60%. Endangered languages An endangered language or moribund language is a language that is at risk of disappearing as its speakers die out or shift to speaking other languages. Language loss occurs when the language has no more native speakers and becomes

250-470: A dominant position in a country. Speakers of endangered languages may themselves come to associate their language with negative values such as poverty, illiteracy and social stigma, causing them to wish to adopt the dominant language that is associated with social and economical progress and modernity . Immigrants moving into an area may lead to the endangerment of the autochthonous language. Dialects and accents have seen similar levels of endangerment during

300-433: A fraction of the world's linguistic diversity, therefore their picture of what human language is—and can be—will be limited. Some linguists consider linguistic diversity to be analogous to biological diversity, and compare language endangerment to wildlife endangerment . Linguists, members of endangered language communities, governments, nongovernmental organizations, and international organizations such as UNESCO and

350-442: A language associated with social or economic power or one spoken more widely, leading to the gradual decline and eventual death of the endangered language. The process of language shift is often influenced by factors such as globalisation, economic authorities, and the perceived prestige of certain languages. The ultimate result is the loss of linguistic diversity and cultural heritage within affected communities. The general consensus

400-577: A language becomes extinct every two weeks, ELCat discovered that on average about one language each three months becomes extinct, about 4 per year. The Catalogue of Endangered Languages was developed by the linguistics departments at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (UHM) and Eastern Michigan University (EMU) between 2011 and 2016. The structure of ELCat was designed during the National Science Foundation -funded workshop on

450-409: A language is unlikely to survive another generation and will soon be extinct. The fourth stage is moribund , followed by the fifth stage extinction . Many projects are under way aimed at preventing or slowing language loss by revitalizing endangered languages and promoting education and literacy in minority languages, often involving joint projects between language communities and linguists. Across

500-413: A language's endangerment, based on four primary factors. These factors, and the levels and descriptions for each, are outlined below. Intergenerational transmission is considered the most important factor in linguistic vitality, and is thus accorded twice the weight of each of the other factors in the scoring algorithm. The scores for each factor are compiled to produce a composite percentage; according to

550-655: A larger sign language or dispersal of the deaf community) can lead to the endangerment and loss of their traditional sign language. Methods are being developed to assess the vitality of sign languages. While there is no definite threshold for identifying a language as endangered, UNESCO 's 2003 document entitled Language vitality and endangerment outlines nine factors for determining language vitality: Many languages, for example some in Indonesia , have tens of thousands of speakers but are endangered because children are no longer learning them, and speakers are shifting to using

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600-512: A specific language that is appropriate for the ELCat are encouraged to submit information pertaining to the improvement or submission of a particular language entry. The organization's website also offers an interactive map to present the origin for these languages around the world. As of 2020, the ELP has catalogued over 3000 endangered languages in its ELCat covering 180 countries/territories throughout

650-441: Is potential endangerment . This is when a language faces strong external pressure, but there are still communities of speakers who pass the language to their children. The second stage is endangerment . Once a language has reached the endangerment stage, there are only a few speakers left and children are, for the most part, not learning the language. The third stage of language extinction is seriously endangered . During this stage,

700-455: Is also sometimes referred to as language revival or reversing language shift . For case studies of this process, see Anderson (2014). Applied linguistics and education are helpful in revitalizing endangered languages. Vocabulary and courses are available online for a number of endangered languages. Language maintenance refers to the support given to languages that need for their survival to be protected from outsiders who can ultimately affect

750-400: Is that there are between 6,000 and 7,000 languages currently spoken. Some linguists estimate that between 50% and 90% of them will be severely endangered or dead by the year 2100. The 20 most common languages , each with more than 50 million speakers, are spoken by 50% of the world's population, but most languages are spoken by fewer than 10,000 people. The first step towards language death

800-500: The Cambridge Handbook of Endangered Languages , there are four main types of causes of language endangerment: Causes that put the populations that speak the languages in physical danger, such as: Causes that prevent or discourage speakers from using a language, such as: Often multiple of these causes act at the same time. Poverty, disease and disasters often affect minority groups disproportionately, for example causing

850-828: The Endangered Languages Information and Infrastructure Project (ELIIP) , held at the University of Utah in 2009. The development ELCat was funded by the National Science Foundation and the Henry Luce Foundation , under the supervision of Principal Investigators Lyle Campbell (UHM) and Anthony Aristar, Helen Aristar-Dry , and later Veronica Grondona (EMU). ELCat and the Endangered Languages Project website are now permanently housed at

900-447: The ISO 639-3 standard. ELCat has found that 45% of all currently-spoken languages are endangered, based on the 3116 still-spoken endangered languages in ELCat compared to the 6861 still-living languages listed by Ethnologue . ELCat finds that 299 languages have fewer than 10 speakers and that 792 are "critically" or "severely" endangered. Importantly, contrary to the often-repeated claim that

950-728: The Northwest Pacific Plateau . Other hotspots are Oklahoma and the Southern Cone of South America. Almost all of the study of language endangerment has been with spoken languages. A UNESCO study of endangered languages does not mention sign languages. However, some sign languages are also endangered, such as Alipur Village Sign Language (AVSL) of India, Adamorobe Sign Language of Ghana, Ban Khor Sign Language of Thailand, and Plains Indian Sign Language . Many sign languages are used by small communities; small changes in their environment (such as contact with

1000-483: The endangered languages of the world. It is available to the public via the Endangered Languages Project website . The Catalogue of Endangered Languages provides information on each of the world's currently endangered languages. It provides information on: The information about each endangered language in ELCat comes from published sources and direct communications from individuals with specialized knowledge of specific endangered languages. All information provided in

1050-611: The national language (e.g. Indonesian ) in place of local languages. In contrast, a language with only 500 speakers might be considered very much alive if it is the primary language of a community, and is the first (or only) spoken language of all children in that community. Asserting that "Language diversity is essential to the human heritage", UNESCO's Ad Hoc Expert Group on Endangered Languages offers this definition of an endangered language: "... when its speakers cease to use it, use it in an increasingly reduced number of communicative domains, and cease to pass it on from one generation to

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1100-472: The 21st century due to similar reasons. Language endangerment affects both the languages themselves and the people that speak them. This also affects the essence of a culture. As communities lose their language, they often lose parts of their cultural traditions that are tied to that language. Examples include songs, myths, poetry, local remedies, ecological and geological knowledge, as well as language behaviors that are not easily translated. Furthermore,

1150-559: The Catalogue is referenced to its original source (e.g. journal article, book, personal communication, etc.), and information from multiple different sources is provided for each language, where available. Users of the Endangered Languages Project website are encouraged to contribute suggestions for improving the information in the Catalogue. All user suggestions are reviewed by Regional Directors, specialists in

1200-559: The ELP are to foster exchange of information related to at-risk languages and accelerate endangered language research and documentation, to support communities engaged in protecting or revitalizing their languages. Users of the website play an active role in putting their languages online by submitting information or samples in the form of text, audio, links or video files. Once uploaded to the website, users can tag their submissions by resource category to ensure they are easily searchable. Current resource categories include: Languages included on

1250-454: The Endangered Languages Project. ELP currently has two full-time staff, four part-time Language Revitalization Mentors, and four interns. The current ELP staff and interns are from the US, Cameroon , Canada , China , India , Ireland , Kenya , Mexico , and Peru . Catalogue of Endangered Languages The Catalogue of Endangered Languages (ELCat) is a major resource for information on

1300-678: The European Union are actively working to save and stabilize endangered languages. Once a language is determined to be endangered, there are three steps that can be taken in order to stabilize or rescue the language. The first is language documentation, the second is language revitalization and the third is language maintenance. Language documentation is the documentation in writing and audio-visual recording of grammar , vocabulary, and oral traditions (e.g. stories, songs, religious texts) of endangered languages. It entails producing descriptive grammars, collections of texts and dictionaries of

1350-539: The Governance Council and Advisory Committee that oversee the organization. The Governance Council currently has eleven members, including Lyle Campbell and Oliver Loode , with a wide range of experience and employment, including language research groups, universities, and Google . The active Governance Council has delegates from the United States , Canada , Australia , Estonia , Cameroon and

1400-536: The Netherlands . It is responsible for management of the website, oversight of outreach efforts and long-term planning for the project. In addition to the governing organizations listed above, a global coalition of organizations working to strengthen and preserve endangered languages is forming through the website. This group is known as the Alliance for Linguistic Diversity. This group partners with Google to run

1450-505: The University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, with ELCat under the direction of Gary Holton (UHM). During its construction phase (2011-2016), ELCat was supervised by a board of Regional Directors, linguists with expertise in specific regions of the world. From 2017 onward, the data in ELCat will be supervised by an International Board of Directors, a group of scholars with expertise in endangered languages, currently chaired by Bill Palmer ( University of Newcastle, Australia ). Funded research to compile

1500-413: The bulk of the Catalogue ended in 2016; however, maintenance and hosting of the Catalogue's database and its contents will continue indefinitely at the University of Hawaii. This includes processing and implementation of user suggestions and feedback, as well as addition of information from newly available sources about endangered languages. The Language Endangerment Index (LEI) provides a numeric rating of

1550-480: The cities or to other countries, thus dispersing the speakers. Cultural dominance occurs when literature and higher education is only accessible in the majority language. Political dominance occurs when education and political activity is carried out exclusively in a majority language. Historically, in colonies, and elsewhere where speakers of different languages have come into contact, some languages have been considered superior to others: often one language has attained

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1600-575: The contributions of linguists globally. Ethnologue's 2005 count of languages in its database, excluding duplicates in different countries, was 6,912, of which 32.8% (2,269) were in Asia, and 30.3% (2,092) in Africa. This contemporary tally must be regarded as a variable number within a range. Areas with a particularly large number of languages that are nearing extinction include: Eastern Siberia , Central Siberia , Northern Australia , Central America , and

1650-461: The cycles of language death and emergence of new languages through creolization as a continuous ongoing process. A majority of linguists do consider that language loss is an ethical problem, as they consider that most communities would prefer to maintain their languages if given a real choice. They also consider it a scientific problem, because language loss on the scale currently taking place will mean that future linguists will only have access to

1700-408: The dispersal of speaker populations and decreased survival rates for those who stay behind. Among the causes of language endangerment cultural, political and economic marginalization accounts for most of the world's language endangerment. Scholars distinguish between several types of marginalization: Economic dominance negatively affects minority languages when poverty leads people to migrate towards

1750-517: The earliest is GIDS (Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale) proposed by Joshua Fishman in 1991. In 2011 an entire issue of Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development was devoted to the study of ethnolinguistic vitality, Vol. 32.2, 2011, with several authors presenting their own tools for measuring language vitality. A number of other published works on measuring language vitality have been published, prepared by authors with varying situations and applications in mind. According to

1800-405: The languages of specific regions of the globe. Discoveries made as the Catalogue was created have resulted in new knowledge about the world's languages. For example, on the one hand, many languages included in other reference works proved spurious, either not to exist or not to be distinct from other languages, and were removed; on the other hand, ELCat has added 260 new languages not identified by

1850-416: The languages, and it requires the establishment of a secure archive where the material can be stored once it is produced so that it can be accessed by future generations of speakers or scientists. Language revitalization is the process by which a language community through political, community, and educational means attempts to increase the number of active speakers of the endangered language. This process

1900-399: The linguistic literature—the language that is being lost generally undergoes changes as speakers make their language more similar to the language that they are shifting to. For example, gradually losing grammatical or phonological complexities that are not found in the dominant language. Generally the accelerated pace of language endangerment is considered to be a problem by linguists and by

1950-455: The next. That is, there are no new speakers, adults or children." UNESCO operates with four levels of language endangerment between "safe" (not endangered) and "extinct" (no living speakers), based on intergenerational transfer: "vulnerable" (not spoken by children outside the home), "definitely endangered" (children not speaking), "severely endangered" (only spoken by the oldest generations), and "critically endangered" (spoken by few members of

2000-545: The number of speakers of a language. UNESCO seeks to prevent language extinction by promoting and supporting the language in education, culture, communication and information, and science. Another option is "post-vernacular maintenance": the teaching of some words and concepts of the lost language, rather than revival proper. As of June 2012 the United States has a J-1 specialist visa , which allows indigenous language experts who do not have academic training to enter

2050-731: The oldest generation, often semi-speakers ). UNESCO's Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger categorises 2,473 languages by level of endangerment. Using an alternative scheme of classification, linguist Michael E. Krauss defines languages as "safe" if it is considered that children will probably be speaking them in 100 years; "endangered" if children will probably not be speaking them in 100 years (approximately 60–80% of languages fall into this category) and "moribund" if children are not speaking them now. Many scholars have devised techniques for determining whether languages are endangered. One of

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2100-456: The percentage, the language is assigned to an endangerment level (e.g. a score of 72% would be LEI level 5, "Severely Endangered"). ELCat also assesses a confidence level for the LEI by calculating the number of factors used to compute the LEI. Again, the intergenerational transmission factor is weighted doubly in this calculation. An LEI which employs information from all four factors would thus have

2150-480: The public and scholars, to aid members of groups whose languages are in peril, and to call attention to the languages most critically in need of conservation.” For example, the organization classifies the Canadian Métis language Michif as critically endangered due to the declining number of its fluent speakers. There were four founding partners who oversaw the website's development and launch: The goals of

2200-661: The social structure of one's community is often reflected through speech and language behavior. This pattern is even more prominent in dialects. This may in turn affect the sense of identity of the individual and the community as a whole, producing a weakened social cohesion as their values and traditions are replaced with new ones. This is sometimes characterized as anomie . Losing a language may also have political consequences as some countries confer different political statuses or privileges on minority ethnic groups, often defining ethnicity in terms of language. In turn, communities that lose their language may also lose political legitimacy as

2250-502: The speakers. However, some linguists, such as the phonetician Peter Ladefoged , have argued that language death is a natural part of the process of human cultural development, and that languages die because communities stop speaking them for their own reasons. Ladefoged argued that linguists should simply document and describe languages scientifically, but not seek to interfere with the processes of language loss. A similar view has been argued at length by linguist Salikoko Mufwene , who sees

2300-454: The website and the information displayed about them are provided by the Catalogue of Endangered Languages (ELCat), developed by the linguistics departments at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and Eastern Michigan University . The catalogue's goal is to continuously improve. While the catalogue began with existing publications, the ELP sought out experts to fill in incomplete entries and correct any mistakes. Users that are knowledgeable about

2350-457: The world is not known, and it is not well defined what constitutes a separate language as opposed to a dialect. Estimates vary depending on the extent and means of the research undertaken, and the definition of a distinct language and the current state of knowledge of remote and isolated language communities. The number of known languages varies over time as some of them become extinct and others are newly discovered. An accurate number of languages in

2400-418: The world was not yet known until the use of universal, systematic surveys in the later half of the twentieth century. The majority of linguists in the early twentieth century refrained from making estimates. Before then, estimates were frequently the product of guesswork and very low. One of the most active research agencies is SIL International , which maintains a database, Ethnologue , kept up to date by

2450-413: The world, many countries have enacted specific legislation aimed at protecting and stabilizing the language of indigenous speech communities . Recognizing that most of the world's endangered languages are unlikely to be revitalized, many linguists are also working on documenting the thousands of languages of the world about which little or nothing is known. The total number of contemporary languages in

2500-541: The world. Some of these languages include Nubi , Irish , Orok , Welsh , Swedish Sign Language , and Boruca . There are 360 endangered languages catalogued in Australia, alone. The ELP states that "over 40 percent of the approximately 7,000 languages worldwide are in danger of becoming extinct." In 2018, members of the ELCat team published a book about the project, titled Cataloguing the World's Endangered Languages .> A select group of invited professionals make up

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