The

UNESCO The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international cooperation in education, arts, sciences and culture. It ...

''Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger'' is an online publication containing a comprehensive list of the world's

endangered language 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 a "dead langu ...

s. It originally replaced the ''Red Book of Endangered Languages'' as a title in print after a brief period of overlap before being transferred to an online only publication.

History

In 1992 the

International Congress of Linguists The International Congress of Linguists (ICL) takes place every five years, under the governance of the Permanent International Committee of Linguists (PICL) / Comité International Permanent des LinguistesCIPL. The 19th ICL was held in Geneva, Swi ...

(CIPL) meeting in

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

discussed the topic of endangered languages, as a result of which it formed the Endangered Languages Committee. It held an international meeting also in 1992 in

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

to place the topic before the world and initiate action. The meeting was considered important enough to come under the authority of

. At the instigation of

Stephen Wurm Stephen Adolphe Wurm ( hu, Wurm István Adolf, ; 19 August 1922 – 24 October 2001) was a Hungarian-born Australian linguist. Early life Wurm was born in Budapest, the second child to the German-speaking Adolphe Wurm and the Hungarian-sp ...

the committee resolved to create a research center, the International Clearing House for Endangered Languages (ICHEL) and to publish the UNESCO ''Red Book of Endangered Languages'' based on the data it collected, the title being derived from that of the ''Red Book of Endangered Species''. Shigeru Tsuchida was to start the research center. It began in 1994 at the

University of Tokyo , abbreviated as or UTokyo, is a public research university located in Bunkyō, Tokyo, Japan. Established in 1877, the university was the first Imperial University and is currently a Top Type university of the Top Global University Project by ...

with Tasaka Tsunoda as its director. Meanwhile, the initial reports on endangered languages had already been collected and submitted to UNESCO by regional experts in 1993. These have since been turned over to ICHEL, which created a website to enable regularly updates to be made available promptly. In February 2009, UNESCO launched an online edition of the ''Atlas of Endangered Languages'' which covers the whole world, contains much more information than previous printed editions and offers the possibility to users to provide online feedback, in view of its constant updating. In May 2022, that website began experiencing a security and redirection problem that has not been fixed.

Classification

The UNESCO list has 6 categories of endangerment: *

Extinct Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...

: there are no speakers left (Note: The Atlas presumes extinction if there have been no known speakers since the 1950s.) * Critically endangered: The youngest speakers are grandparents and older, and they speak the language partially and infrequently * Severely endangered: The language is spoken by grandparents and older generations. While the parent generation may understand it, they do not speak it to children or among themselves * Definitely endangered: Children no longer learn the language as a mother tongue in the home. * Vulnerable: Most children speak the language, but it may be restricted to certain domains (e.g. home) * Safe / Not Endangered: Is spoken by all generations and intergenerational transmission is uninterrupted (Note: These languages are not included in the Atlas because they are not endangered.)

References

External links

* * {{cite web, title=UNESCO ''Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger'', url=http://www.unesco.org/tools/fileretrieve/43fdd320.pdf, archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220531155026/http://www.unesco.org/tools/fileretrieve/43fdd320.pdf, archive-date=2022-05-31, language=English, publisher=UNESCO, year=2010, accessdate=2022-05-31 Endangered languages projects UNESCO 1994 works 2010 works