A Subah is a term for a province or state in several South Asian languages . It was introduced by the Mughal Empire to refer to its subdivisions or provinces; and was also adopted by other polities of the Indian subcontinent . The word is derived from Arabic and Persian . The governor/ruler of a Subah was known as a subahdar (sometimes also referred to as a " Subeh "), which later became subedar to refer to an officer in the Indian and Pakistani armies. The subahs were established by Padishah (emperor) Akbar during his administrative reforms of the years 1572–1580; initially, they numbered 12, but his conquests expanded the number of subahs to 15 by the end of his reign. Subahs were divided into Sarkars , or districts. Sarkars were further divided into Parganas or Mahals . His successors, most notably Aurangzeb , expanded the number of subahs further through their conquests. As the empire began to dissolve in the early 18th century, many subahs became de facto independent or came under the influence of the Marathas or the suzerainty of the East India Company .
75-642: In the modern context, subah ( صوبہ ) is used in several Pakistani languages (most notably Punjabi , Balochi , and Urdu ) to refer to a province of Pakistan. Initially, after the administrative reforms of Akbar , the Mughal empire was divided into 12 subahs: Kabul, Lahore, Multan, Delhi, Agra, Avadh, Illahabad, Bihar, Bangal, Malwa, Ajmer and Gujarat. After the conquest of Deccan , he created three more subahs there: Berar, Khandesh (initially renamed Dandesh in 1601) and Ahmadnagar (in 1636 renamed as Daulatabad and subsequently as Aurangabad). Jahangir increased
150-541: 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
225-424: 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
300-631: A Mughal subah in 1692. During the Mughal Empire, the Punjab region consisted of three subahs: Lahore, Multan, and parts of Delhi subah. The Sikh Empire (1799–1849), originating in the Punjab region, also used the term Suba for the provinces it administered under its territorial delineation, of which there were five. In modern usage in Urdu language, the term is used as a word for province , while
375-448: 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
450-576: A first language by almost 15% of Pakistanis, mostly in the Sindh province of Pakistan. The name "Sindhi" is derived from Sindhu , the original name of the Indus River . Like other languages of this family, Sindhi has passed through Old Indo-Aryan ( Sanskrit ) and Middle Indo-Aryan (Pali, secondary Prakrits, and Apabhramsha ) stages of growth. 20th century Western scholars such as George Abraham Grierson believed that Sindhi descended specifically from
525-469: 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
600-588: A long history in the lands of Pakistan and was the cultural language of the erstwhile Mughal Empire , a continuation since the introduction of the language by Central Asian Turkic invaders who migrated into the Indian Subcontinent, and the patronisation of it by the earlier Turko-Persian Delhi Sultanate. Persian was officially abolished as a language of administration with the arrival of the British: in Sindh in 1843 and in Punjab in 1849. Today
675-694: 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
750-460: A million speakers. The 2022 edition of Ethnologue lists 77 established languages in Pakistan. Of these, 68 are indigenous and 9 are non-indigenous. In terms of their vitality, 4 are classified as 'institutional', 24 are 'developing', 30 are 'vigorous', 15 are 'in trouble', and 4 are 'dying'. Languages of Pakistan (2023 census) * Saraiki and Hindko were included with Punjabi until
825-533: A result of the administrative reform by Akbar(Mughal Emperor): The subahs which added later were (with dates established): Languages of Pakistan Pakistan is a multilingual country with over 70 languages spoken as first languages . The majority of Pakistan's languages belong to the Indo-Iranian group of the Indo-European language family . Urdu is the national language and
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#1732772412748900-455: 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
975-470: 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
1050-582: 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
1125-525: 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
1200-665: A variant of the Urdu alphabet , is used to write the Punjabi language in Pakistan. Usually, bare transliterations of Urdu into Roman letters, Roman Urdu , omit many phonemic elements that have no equivalent in English or other languages commonly written in the Latin script . The National Language Authority of Pakistan has developed a number of systems with specific notations to signify non-English sounds, but these can only be properly read by someone already familiar with Urdu. This
1275-644: Is Lahnda , and includes Saraiki (spoken mostly in southern Pakistani Punjab by about 26 million people), the diverse varieties of Hindko (with almost five million speakers in north-western Punjab and neighbouring regions of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa , especially Hazara ), Pahari/Pothwari (3.5 million speakers in the Pothohar region of Punjab, Azad Kashmir and parts of Indian Jammu and Kashmir ), Khetrani (20,000 speakers in Balochistan ), and Inku (a possibly extinct language of Afghanistan). Majority of
1350-554: Is a Dravidian language spoken in the central part of Balochistan province . Brahui is spoken in the central part of Pakistani Balochistan , mainly in Kalat , Khuzdar and Mastung districts, but also in smaller numbers in neighboring districts, as well as in Afghanistan which borders Pakistani Balochistan; however, many members of the ethnic group no longer speak Brahui. Other languages spoken by linguistic minorities include
1425-400: Is a co-official language of Pakistan and is widely used in the executive, legislative and judicial branches as well as to some extent in the officer ranks of Pakistan's armed forces. Pakistan's Constitution and laws were written in English and are now being re-written in the local languages. It is also widely used in schools , colleges and universities as a medium of instruction . English
1500-499: Is a series of maps which shows the distribution of different languages in Pakistan as of the 2017 Pakistan Census . These all refer to the mother tongues of individuals only. Ethnologue Ethnologue: Languages of the World is an annual reference publication in print and online that provides statistics and other information on the living languages of the world. It is the world's most comprehensive catalogue of languages. It
1575-471: Is a sub-dialect of Rakshani. Other sub-dialects are Kalati (Qalati), Chagai-Kharani and Panjguri. Eastern Hill Balochi or Northern Balochi is very different from the rest. Hindko ( ہندکو ) is a cover term for a diverse group of Lahnda dialects spoken in several discontinuous areas in northwestern Pakistan, primarily in the provinces of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab . Hindko is mutually intelligible with Punjabi and Saraiki , and has more affinities with
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#17327724127481650-710: Is an Indo-Aryan language primarily spoken in the Punjab province of Pakistan, with the prominent dialect being the Majha dialect , written in the Shahmukhi script . Punjabi is the most widely spoken language in Pakistan. It is spoken as a first language by 38.78% of Pakistanis. The language is spoken among a significant overseas diaspora, particularly in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Punjabi
1725-518: 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
1800-504: Is seen as the language of upward mobility, and its use is becoming more prevalent in upper social circles, where it is often spoken alongside native Pakistani languages. In 2015, it was announced that there were plans to promote Urdu in official business, but Pakistan's Minister of Planning Ahsan Iqbal stated, "Urdu will be a second medium of language and all official business will be bilingual." He also went on to say that English would be taught alongside Urdu in schools. Punjabi ( پنجابی )
1875-450: Is taught as a compulsory subject up to higher secondary school in both English and Urdu medium school systems, which has produced millions of second-language Urdu speakers among people whose native language is one of the other languages of Pakistan – which in turn has led to the absorption of vocabulary from various regional Pakistani languages, while some Urdu vocabularies has also been assimilated by Pakistan's regional languages. English
1950-562: Is unusual among the Indo-Aryan languages and the broader Indo-European language family in its usage of lexical tone . Pashto ( پښتو ) is an Iranian language spoken as a first language by more than 18.24% of Pakistanis, mainly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and in northern Balochistan as well as in ethnic Pashtun communities in the cities of Islamabad , Rawalpindi , Lahore , and most notably Karachi , which may have
2025-524: The lingua franca of Pakistan, and while sharing official status with English, it is the preferred and dominant language used for inter-communication between different ethnic groups. Numerous regional languages are spoken as first languages by Pakistan's various ethnolinguistic groups. Languages with more than a million speakers each include Punjabi , Pashto , Sindhi , Saraiki , Urdu , Balochi , Persian , Hindko , Pahari-Pothwari and Brahui . There are approximately 60 local languages with fewer than
2100-645: 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
2175-778: The Perso-Arabic script . The Mughal Empire adopted Persian as the court language during their rule over South Asia as did their predecessors, such as the Ghaznavids. During this time, the Nastaʿlīq style of the Perso-Arabic script came into widespread use in South Asia, and the influence remains to this day. In Pakistan, almost everything in Urdu is written in the script, concentrating the greater part of Nastaʿlīq usage in
2250-556: The Sindhi language spoken to the south. Saraiki is the language of about 26 million people in Pakistan , ranging across southern Punjab , southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa , and border regions of northern Sindh and eastern Balochistan . Balochi ( بلوچی ) is an Iranian language spoken as a first language by about 3% of Pakistanis, mostly in the Balochistan province. Rakshani is the major dialect group in terms of numbers. Sarhaddi
2325-499: 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
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2400-425: 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
2475-543: 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
2550-469: The 1981 census. * Census data for the Pakistani administered territories of Gilgit Baltistan and Azad Kashmir not available as of 2024. Urdu ( اردو ) is the national language ( قومی زبان ) and lingua franca of Pakistan. Although only about 9% of Pakistanis speak it as their first language, it is widely spoken and understood as a second language by the vast majority of Pakistanis. Urdu
2625-490: 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
2700-562: 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
2775-524: 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
2850-653: The Naskh style is more common for Sindhi writing than the Nasta'liq style. It has a total of 52 letters, augmenting the Urdu with digraphs and eighteen new letters ( ڄ ٺ ٽ ٿ ڀ ٻ ڙ ڍ ڊ ڏ ڌ ڇ ڃ ڦ ڻ ڱ ڳ ڪ ) for sounds particular to Sindhi and other Indo-Aryan languages. Some letters that are distinguished in Arabic or Persian are homophones in Sindhi. Balochi and Pashto are written in Perso-Arabic script . The Shahmukhī script ,
2925-521: The People's Republic of China . Most of the languages of Pakistan belong to the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family . The common ancestor of all of the languages in this family is called Proto-Indo-Iranian —also known as Common Aryan—which was spoken in approximately the late 3rd millennium BC. The three branches of the modern Indo-Iranian languages are Indo-Aryan , Iranian , and Nuristani . A fourth independent branch, Dardic ,
3000-670: The Vrācaḍa dialect of Apabhramsha (described by Markandeya as being spoken in Sindhu-deśa ) but later work has shown this to be unlikely. It entered the New Indo-Aryan stage around the 10th century CE. The six major known dialects of the Sindhi language are Siroli, Vicholi, Lari, Thari, Lasi and Kutchi . Saraiki ( سرائیکی ) is an Indo-Aryan language of the Lahnda group, spoken in central and southeastern Pakistan, primarily in
3075-641: The World's Languages in Danger (2010; formerly the Red Book of Endangered Languages ), as well as the online edition of the aforementioned publication, both published by UNESCO. Arabic is used as a religious language by Muslims. The Quran , Sunnah , Hadith and Muslim theology is taught in Arabic with Urdu translation. Arabic is taught as a religious language in mosques, schools, colleges, universities and madrassahs . A majority of Pakistan's Muslim population has had some form of formal or informal education in
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3150-475: 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
3225-600: The eastern Dari dialect of Persian is spoken by refugees from Afghanistan and a small number of local Balochistani Hazara community. A larger number of Pakistani Hazaras speak Hazaragi dialect. In the Madaklasht valley of Chitral, the Madaklashti dialect of Tajik Persian is spoken by the descendants of ironmongers from Badakhshan who settled there in the eighteenth century. As of 2017 some Pakistanis are learning Mandarin to do business with companies from
3300-712: 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
3375-412: The languages listed below, with speakers ranging from a few hundred to tens of thousands. A few are highly endangered languages that may soon have no speakers at all. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization defines five levels of language endangerment between "safe" (not endangered) and "extinct": The list below includes the findings from the third edition of Atlas of
3450-414: 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
3525-530: The languages spoken in western regions of Pakistan belong to the Iranic group. There are several dialects continuums in this family as well: Balochi , which includes Eastern, Western and Southern Balochi; and Pashto, and includes Northern, Central, and Southern Pashto . The following three languages of Pakistan are not part of the Indo-European language family: Most languages of Pakistan are written in
3600-507: The largest Pashtun population of any city in the world. There are three major dialect patterns within which the various individual dialects may be classified; these are the Pakhto variety of Northern ( Peshawar ) variety, the southern Pashto spoken in the vicinity of Quetta , and the Wanetsi or Tareeno variety of northern Balochistan. Sindhi ( سنڌي ) is an Indo-Aryan language spoken as
3675-481: The latter than with the former. Differences with other Punjabi varieties are more pronounced in the morphology and phonology than in the syntax. The word Hindko , commonly used to refer to a number of Indo-Aryan dialects spoken in the neighbourhood of Pashto , likely originally meant "the Indian language" (in contrast to Pashto). An alternative local name for this language group is Hindki . Brahui ( براہوئی )
3750-495: The learners to have command in the language." This law is also valid for private schools as it defines in article 3.7.12: "The curriculum in Islamiyat, Arabic and Moral Education of public sector will be adopted by the private institutions to make uniformity in the society." Persian was the official of the region up until the late 19th century when the English passed several laws to replace it with local languages. Persian had
3825-513: The learning of Arabic language ..." The National Education Policy 2017 declares in article 3.7.4 that: "Arabic as compulsory part will be integrated in Islamiyat from Middle to Higher Secondary level to enable the students to understand the Holy Quran." Furthermore, it specifies in article 3.7.6: "Arabic as elective subject shall be offered properly at Secondary and Higher Secondary level with Arabic literature and grammar in its course to enable
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#17327724127483900-817: 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
3975-488: 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
4050-501: The number of subahs to 17 during his reign; Orissa being carved out of Bangal in 1607. The number of subahs increased to 22 under Shah Jahan . In his 8th regnal year, Shah Jahan separated the sarkar of Telangana from Berar and made it into a separate subah. In 1657, it was merged with Zafarabad Bidar subah. Agra was renamed Akbarabad in 1629 and Delhi became Shahjahanbad in 1648. Kashmir was carved out of Kabul, Thatta (Sindh) out of Multan, and Bidar out of Ahmadnagar. For some time Qandahar
4125-649: 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
4200-457: The reading, writing and pronunciation of Arabic as part of their religious education. However, Pakistanis are not Arabs and do not speak Arabic. Arabic is mentioned in the constitution of Pakistan . It declares in article 31 No. 2 that "The State shall endeavour, as respects the Muslims of Pakistan (a) to make the teaching of the Holy Quran and Islamiat compulsory, to encourage and facilitate
4275-515: 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
4350-430: The southern part of the province of Punjab. Saraiki is to a high degree mutually intelligible with Standard Punjabi and shares with it a large portion of its vocabulary and morphology . At the same time in its phonology it is radically different (particularly in the lack of tones, the preservation of the voiced aspirates and the development of implosive consonants), and has important grammatical features in common with
4425-493: 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
4500-523: The word riyasat ( Urdu : ریاست , "princely state" in English) is used for (federated) state . The terminologies are based on the administrative structure of British India which was partially derived from the Mughal administrative structure. In modern times, the term subah is mainly used in Pakistan , where its four provinces are called "Subah" in the Urdu language. The twelve subahs created as
4575-544: 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
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#17327724127484650-556: 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
4725-656: 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
4800-603: The world. The Urdu alphabet is a right-to-left alphabet . It is a modification of the Persian alphabet, which is itself a derivative of the Arabic alphabet . With 38 letters, the Urdu alphabet is typically written in the calligraphic Nasta'liq script . Sindhi adopted a variant of the Persian alphabet as well, in the 19th century. The script is used in Pakistan today, albeit unlike most other native languages of Pakistan,
4875-635: 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
4950-440: Was a separate subah under the Mughal Empire but it was lost to Persia in 1648. Aurangzeb added Bijapur (1686), Sira (1687) and Golkonda (1687) as new subahs. There were 22 subahs during his reign. These were Kabul, Kashmir, Lahore, Multan, Delhi, Agra, Avadh, Illahabad, Bihar, Bangalah, Orissa, Malwa, Ajmer, Gujarat, Berar, Khandesh, Aurangabad, Bidar, Thatta, Bijapur, Sira and Haidarabad (Golkonda). Aurangzeb made Arcot
5025-406: Was chosen as a symbol of unity for the new state of Pakistan in 1947, because it had already served as a lingua franca among Muslims in north and northwest British India . It is written, spoken and used in all provinces/territories of Pakistan , and together with English as the main languages of instruction, although the people from differing provinces may have different native languages. Urdu
5100-432: 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
5175-645: 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
5250-623: 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
5325-422: 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
5400-672: 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
5475-562: 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
5550-472: Was previously posited, but recent scholarship in general places Dardic languages as archaic members of the Indo-Aryan branch. Majority of the languages spoken in eastern regions of Pakistan belong to the Indo-Aryan group. Modern Indo-Aryan languages descend from Old Indo-Aryan languages such as early Vedic Sanskrit , through Middle Indo-Aryan languages (or Prakrits ). Some of the important languages in this family are dialect continuums . One of these
5625-442: 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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