I was wondering one day how many unidentified languages there are aroung the world so I skyped an expert. These were his comments. I took notes. [my comments]
Feel free to correct this Ted if you remember differently. 🙂
139 estimated unknown languages in China.
185 South East Asia.
25 in India.
Ethnologue total is the same as then 4 years ago because languages are dying out.
6909 living languages in the 16th edition of the Ethnologue.
Living languages = 7360.
So we are about 90% done with language list. Leaves 700 languages unidentified.
[I figured 80%]
Southern Pakistan, needs work.
Nepal brand new effort with government. Will prove more languages.
Philippines 15 more languages to research.
Indonesia – Sumatra Have some languages.
Irianjaya – Have some languages.
New Guinea and Papua – still finding more small languages.
Socio-linguistic Criterion and Functional.
Socio-linguistic count to find out (Functional definition).
[a better term here could be unclassified, as there are areas where different languages are known to exist they just don’t know what they are, no survey yet]
This conversation took place on about the 15th of August 2009