Why Is Ethnologue So Expensive?

Ongoing costs include website maintenance, security, and paying researchers to update the databases whenever new information comes in from independent researchers or SIL's 5000 field linguists. ... "We thought the bulk of the people using Ethnologue were academic researchers," Moitozo says.

Is ethnologue reliable?

The Ethnologue is intended to be used as a catalog that provides summary data of identified languages. Information comes from numerous sources and is confirmed by consulting both reliable published sources and a network of field correspondents.

How do I access ethnologue?

You can start your subscription now by clicking on the Subscribe link at the top of the home page at Ethnologue.com or you can go there directly by going to: with your browser. A third path is to click on the page counter in the bottom left corner of the page.