Re: the Ethnologue

From: Christopher J. Fynn (cfynn@dircon.co.uk)
Date: Tue Sep 12 2000 - 21:18:40 EDT


> Can anyone point me to an existing list of languages that is more
> comprehensive and better researched than the Ethnologue?
> If there is no such list, then we don't need to consider any
> alternatives, right?

I'm not qualified to judge the merits of one list over another
but there certaily are other comprehensive and well researched
lists e.g. the Linguasphere Register of the World's Languages
and Speech Communities see: http://www.linguasphere.org/

Unfortunately their list is not available online, you have to buy
the book - a bit like ISO/IEC 10646 and many other standards
:-)

I do know that the way the compilers of the Linguasphere have
classified languages and dialects is different than the way the
compilers of the Ethnolouge have - though I'm sure both could
give you well reasoned arguments why their scheme is better
or more useful than the other.

- Chris



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