''Glottolog'' is an open-access online

bibliographic database A bibliographic database is a database of bibliographic records. This is an organised online collection of references to published written works like academic journal, journal and newspaper articles, conference proceedings, reports, government an ...

of the world's languages. In addition to listing linguistic materials ( grammars, articles,

dictionaries A dictionary is a listing of lexemes from the lexicon of one or more specific languages, often arranged Alphabetical order, alphabetically (or by Semitic root, consonantal root for Semitic languages or radical-and-stroke sorting, radical an ...

) describing individual languages, the database also contains the most up-to-date language affiliations based on the work of expert linguists. Glottolog was first developed and maintained at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in

Leipzig Leipzig (, ; ; Upper Saxon: ; ) is the most populous city in the States of Germany, German state of Saxony. The city has a population of 628,718 inhabitants as of 2023. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, eighth-largest city in Ge ...

, Germany, and between 2015 and 2020 at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Jena, Germany. Its main curators include Harald Hammarström and Martin Haspelmath.

Overview

Sebastian Nordhoff and Harald Hammarström established the Glottolog/Langdoc project in 2011. The creation of ''Glottolog'' was partly motivated by the lack of a comprehensive language bibliography, especially in ''

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 w ...

''. Glottolog provides a catalogue of the world's languages and language families and a bibliography on individual languages. It differs from ''Ethnologue'' in several respects: * It includes only those languages that the editors have been able to confirm both exist and are distinct. Varieties that have not been confirmed, but are inherited from another source, are tagged as "

spurious Spurious may refer to: * Spurious relationship in statistics * Spurious emission or spurious tone in radio engineering * Spurious key in cryptography * Spurious interrupt in computing * Spurious wakeup in computing * ''Spurious'', a 2011 no ...

" or " unattested". * It attempts only to classify languages into families demonstrated to be valid groupings based on research by linguists specializing in them. * Comprehensive bibliographic information is provided, especially for lesser-known or underdescribed languages. * To a limited extent, alternative names are listed according to the sources that use them. * Apart from a single point-location on a map at its geographic centre, no ethnographic or

demographic Demography () is the statistics, statistical study of human populations: their size, composition (e.g., ethnic group, age), and how they change through the interplay of fertility (births), mortality (deaths), and migration. Demographic analy ...

information is provided. Language names used in the bibliographic entries are identified by ISO 639-3 code or Glottolog's own code (Glottocode). External links are provided to ISO, ''Ethnologue'' and other online language databases The latest version is 5.1, released under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License in October 2024. It is part of the Cross-Linguistic Linked Data project hosted by the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology.

Language families

''Glottolog'' is more conservative in its classification than other databases in establishing membership of languages and families given its strict criteria for postulating larger groupings. On the other hand, the database is more permissive in terms of considering unclassified languages as isolates. Edition 4.8 lists 421

spoken language A spoken language is a form of communication produced through articulate sounds or, in some cases, through manual gestures, as opposed to written language. Oral or vocal languages are those produced using the vocal tract, whereas sign languages ar ...

families and isolates as follows: Creoles are classified with the language that supplied their basic

lexicon A lexicon (plural: lexicons, rarely lexica) is the vocabulary of a language or branch of knowledge (such as nautical or medical). In linguistics, a lexicon is a language's inventory of lexemes. The word ''lexicon'' derives from Greek word () ...

. In addition to the families and isolates listed above, ''Glottolog'' uses several non-genealogical families for various languages: *

Pidgin A pidgin , or pidgin language, is a grammatically simplified form of contact language that develops between two or more groups of people that do not have a language in common: typically, its vocabulary and grammar are limited and often drawn f ...

s (84 languages) * Mixed languages (9) * Artificial languages (31) * Speech registers (15) * Sign languages (223) *Unclassifiable attested languages (121) * Unattested languages (68) *Bookkeeping: spurious languages, such as retired ISO entries; kept for bookkeeping purposes (390 including 6 sign languages)

Notes

References

External links

* {{Authority control 2011 establishments in Germany Internet properties established in 2011 Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History Linguistics websites * Bibliographic databases and indexes Linguistics databases Cross-Linguistic Linked Data