Linguistics news and stories
News and stories about the world's 7,170 living languages, the people who speak them, and the linguists who study them.
Ethnologue's 2026 edition counts 7,170 living languages. Other catalogs give totals from about 7,000 to 8,324, depending on what they call a language and whether they count the dead ones.
We write about languages and the people who study them: how many there are, how they are related, what happens when one loses its last speakers, and what linguists actually do all day.
Every figure in a story is checked against its source on the day we publish, and the sources are listed at the end so you can check them too. More about the site.
