Who is indigenous?

[M Paul Lewis]

Dave:

It might be helpful for me to share a bit of the thought process we’ve gone through with the Ethnologue in trying to better define the concept of an indigenous/non-immigrant language.

As you may know, the Ethnologue is organized around the notion of identified “languages in country”.  We assign a hub or primary country for each language (based usually on the country of origin of the language, but where that is unclear or in doubt, we use the country with the largest L1 speaker population).  The entry for a language in its hub country is fuller and more complete. Non-hub country language entries contain basic information about the language in that country and cross-reference the more complete information in the hub country entry. 

We also distinguish between indigenous/non-immigrant (using those terms somewhat interchangeably) languages and “others”.  If a language is considered indigenous, we list a separate entry for it in any country where it is spoken.  If it isn’t considered indigenous, we make only a brief mention of it in the country information summary and may include a population estimate after naming it, but that’s allIt has become more and more difficult for us to make those categorizations given the mobility of global populations, so we have had to nail down something more precise than the general impressions that informed earlier decisions.  What we’ve arrived at is that a language moves from being an immigrant language to being a non-immigrant language (labels I prefer over indigenous and non-indigenous for all the reasons you give) in the Ethnologue’s reporting when there is a “longstanding, i.e., extending over multiple generations, established community of speakers resident in the country”.  This allows us to account for populations of speakers who migrated years ago and who have “settled” in their new locations raising their children while maintaining their ethnic identity and (hopefully) their languages.  It also enables us to exclude refugee groups (though in some places refugee settlements are close to becoming “longstanding” and “established"), migrant workers,  exchange students, tourists, expatriate workers (professional or otherwise),  etc.

This definition still could use some tightening up (how many generations are adequate to qualify as “longstanding” and what constitutes an “established” community?) but has helped us to begin to sort out the complexities of language demographics in many linguistically rich countries.

All the best

M Paul Lewis
Editor, Ethnologue: Languages of the World (www.ethnologue.com