ELL: URL

[Peter Constable]

Benjamin:

>Here's a URL for endangered language resources
>
>http://www.yourdictionary.com/elr/foundations.html

That's an interesting site! The page of nearly extinct languages is great
(and depressing -- no fault of the developer of the site).

I don't know if you have contributed to the development of this site or are
familiar with the same. I'm curious about the inventory of languages and
how it compares to the list in the Ethnologue. The 14th edition of E lists
6809 living languages. I believe that doesn't count recently extinct
languages, so it's total language count would be, I believe, higher --
something on the order of 7,200 - 7,300, but I'm not sure exactly what. The
your.dictionary site cites 7,327 living languages. There aren't that many
comprehensive catalogs of the world's languages, and when the numbers come
out so close, it makes me suspect a relationship. But then, when I can't
match the numbers up exactly, I'm left puzzled. Do you know if the count of
7,327 was based on the Ethnologue, and if so how the discrepency betwe 7327
and 6809 is accounted for? I don't know what a count would look like if
languages were accidently counted multiple times corresponding to multiple
countries, but I thought I'd make sure that error wasn't occuring. If it
isn't based on the Ethnologue, then do you know what the source was? (If
there's another source out there that's similar to Ethnologue in it's
results, I'd like to find out more about it.)


Regards,

- Peter


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Peter Constable

Non-Roman Script Initiative, SIL International
7500 W. Camp Wisdom Rd., Dallas, TX 75236, USA
Tel: +1 972 708 7485
E-mail: <peter_constable at sil.org>

  
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