Ethnologue

Further along, creoles.

At the far end, a fully distinct language with its own ISO code and entry in Ethnologue.

And the mechanisms that move you along that spectrum are actually pretty well understood.

They're just not tidy.

Which brings us to the numbers.

Because if the definition is political, then the count is political too.

Ethnologue currently lists over seven thousand living languages.

But that number is contested.