Ethnologue

From Free net encyclopedia

(Redirected from SIL code)

Ethnologue: Languages of the World is a web and print publication of SIL International (formerly known as the Summer Institute of Linguistics), a Christian linguistic service organization which studies lesser-known languages primarily to provide the speakers with native language biblical texts.

The Ethnologue contains statistics for 6,912 languages in the 15th edition, released in 2005 (up from 6,809 in the 14th edition, released 2000) and gives the number of speakers, location, dialects, linguistic affiliations, availability of the Bible, and so forth. It is currently the most comprehensive existing language inventory, along with the Linguasphere Register. However, some information regarding more esoteric languages is quite dated.

What counts as a language depends on socio-linguistic evaluation: see Dialect.

In 1984 the Ethnologue released a three-letter coding system, called SIL code, to identify each language it describes. This set of codes significantly exceeded the scope of previous standards e.g. ISO 639-1 and RFC 3066. In 2002 the Ethnologue was asked to work with the International Standardization Organization (ISO) to integrate its codes into a draft international standard. The Ethnologue now uses this standard, called ISO 639-3.

The neutrality of Ethnologue as a scientific institution is sometimes disputed, for example in the classification of Semitic languages.

Conversely, the neutrality of Ethnologue as a scientific institution is sometimes lauded: in addition to choosing a primary name for the language, it also gives some of the names by which a language is called by its speakers, by the government, by foreigners, and by neighbors, as well as how it has been named and referenced historically, regardless of which designation is considered official, politically correct, or offensive, or by whom. This selection of "alternative names" is extensive, but often incomplete.

As is inevitable in an enterprise so enormous, the Ethnologue contains some errors, some of which it fixes at every edition; for instance, en route to the 14th edition, some languages such as Chenoua were added, and some rumoured "languages" such as Nemadi or Wutana were removed. Some possible remaining errors are discussed at Imraguen language, Senhaja de Srair language, Ghomara language, Kwavi language, Molengue language, Yauma language, Fer language, Yeni language, Hwla language, and Ofayé.

1 Controversy
- 1.1 Linguistics
- 1.2 Statistics
2 See also
3 External links

[edit]

Controversy

[edit]

Linguistics

Ethnologue has been accused of going against general linguistic community consensus (and contrary to the opinion of the majority of the speakers themselves in some cases) as to what constitutes a separate language (as opposed to a dialect). More notable are the classification of Flemish and several dialects of Swedish as separate languages with unique language codes. In cases like Scanian, the dialect does not meet the minimum criteria for mutual unintelligibility from Standard Swedish. Ethnologue also attributes separate language status to "Yinglish", an English vernacular spoken by some Jewish Americans which is to some degree influenced by the Yiddish and Hebrew languages. Some of these classifications don't meet Ethnologue's own professed criteria for classification.[1]

[edit]

Statistics

Ethnologue's estimates about the number of the speakers of the languages is inconsistent with other sources. For example, in Ethnologue, the speakers of Persian and Azerbaijani languages in Iran are estimated as 36% and 37%, respectively. In The World Factbook, these percentages are estimated as 51% and 24%.

[edit]