An endangered language is one at risk of falling out of use, usually because its speakers are shifting to another language and children are no longer learning it. Endangerment is about who passes a language on, not only how many people speak it.
Key takeaways
- A language is usually called endangered when speakers stop using it, or use it in fewer and fewer situations, and stop passing it to the next generation.
- On our map, 4,003 living languages (59.6%) are rated threatened, shifting, moribund or nearly extinct by Glottolog.
- Only 415 languages are rated moribund and 294 nearly extinct, the two most severe levels shown.
- Endangered does not mean doomed: some endangered languages have grown again after community effort.
How endangerment works
The usual test is not how many people speak a language today, but whether it is being handed on. UNESCO's expert group describes a language as endangered when its speakers stop using it, or use it in a smaller and smaller range of situations, and stop passing it from one generation to the next [1]. A language spoken by a large community can be in trouble if the children all grow up speaking something else. A very small language can be stable if every child learns it at home.
This is why endangered languages are often described in steps rather than as a yes or no. Early on, children still speak the language but only at home. Later, children no longer learn it. Eventually the youngest speakers are grandparents, and then there are no fluent speakers left [1]. Researchers who track this, including the Linguistic Society of America [1], stress that a language usually loses ground through a shift: people move to a language that carries more jobs, schooling or status.
Several scales exist. UNESCO has one with levels from safe to extinct (see UNESCO endangerment levels). Glottolog, which this map uses, has its own, built from several sources including UNESCO's atlas and Ethnologue [2].
An example from our data
Glottolog rates 4,003 of the 6,722 living languages on the map, or 59.6%, as at risk. That groups four levels: 1,542 threatened, 1,752 shifting, 415 moribund and 294 nearly extinct. The other 2,688 (40%) are rated not endangered. Extinct languages are left off the map entirely.
Individual pages show how different the same word can look. Hawaiian is rated moribund and has about 26,000 speakers (2010 United States Census, 2010), counted as approximate. Welsh is rated threatened with about 724,000 speakers (Wikidata (unreferenced)), and Maori is rated shifting with about 214,000 speakers (stats.govt.nz, 2023). These are very different situations, which is why the level matters more than the headline label. The homepage section on languages at risk gives the overview.
The thing people get wrong
Many people assume an endangered language has only a handful of speakers. Size and safety are related but not the same thing. Glottolog's status is a judgement about transmission, taken from published surveys of each language, and it is a snapshot that can be out of date. Some languages that were once thought lost have since gained learners, which is the subject of language revitalisation [1].
The map shows where a language has traditionally been spoken, not where it is thriving. A large coloured area can belong to a language whose speakers are mostly elderly.
Frequently asked questions
How many languages on this map are endangered?
Using Glottolog's scale, 4,003 of the 6,722 living languages on the map (59.6%) are threatened, shifting, moribund or nearly extinct.
Is a language with many speakers safe?
Not automatically. What matters most is whether children keep learning it, so a language with thousands of speakers can still be at risk if only older people use it.
Sources
- Endangered language, Wikipedia.
- Glottolog: language status, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
- Every figure from our own map is worked out from the datasets on the data sources page (checked against Glottolog and Glottography, retrieved 13 October 2026).