Endangered Languages by Continent With Speaker Counts Statistics 2026

88.1 million people speak an endangered language as their mother tongue. Those speakers are spread across 3,193 languages, 44% of the 7,159 living languages Ethnologue counted in February 2026. This post sets out endangered languages by continent, the speaker counts sitting behind each vitality tier, and what national censuses record for individual languages.

Endangered Languages by Continent With Speaker Counts

How Many Endangered Languages Are There in 2026?

Ethnologue splits every living language into three broad states. In its February 2026 figures, 3,193 languages were endangered, 3,479 were stable and 487 were institutional, meaning they are used by governments, schools and media.

Two further categories sit outside the living count: 337 dormant languages, which have no proficient speakers but still carry a social role, and 454 extinct ones. The count moves between updates, and Ethnologue’s own site listed 3,045 endangered languages when checked on 11 August 2026.

Source: Ethnologue, reported by Al Jazeera, February 2026

Which Continent Has the Most Endangered Languages?

Oceania leads on catalogued endangered languages, with Asia close behind. The two together hold 1,426 of the 2,450 languages in the Endangered Languages Project catalogue, despite Oceania’s small share of world population.

Europe and Russia sit at the bottom with 148, roughly a fifth of Oceania’s count. Al Jazeera’s February 2026 report placed the regions in the same order, so the ranking has held even as absolute counts shift between editions.

Source: Endangered Languages Project catalogue, mapped by Statista, February 2022

Why the Regional Total Sits Below 3,193

The 2,450 regional figure and Ethnologue’s 3,193 are not competing claims. The two projects run different endangerment scales, the Language Endangerment Index against EGIDS, and different language inventories. Adding them together produces nonsense.

Endangered Languages by Continent: Speaker Counts by Vitality Level

Ethnologue’s 27th edition classified 3,078 of 7,168 living languages as endangered across five vitality levels. The distribution inside that group is lopsided.

Threatened languages account for 1,641 entries and 75,983,169 first-language speakers. The four more severe tiers hold 1,437 languages between them and about 12 million speakers. Dormant languages have no proficient speakers yet keep a social role, which is why Ethnologue counts them apart from extinct ones. Our dying language statistics breakdown covers what happens inside those lower tiers.

Source: Ethnologue 27th Edition, published by Visual Capitalist, January 2024; shares calculated against 7,168 living languages

How Many Endangered Languages Have Almost No Speakers?

Three speaker bands describe the bottom of the range. They are nested, so the 110 languages with fewer than 10 first-language speakers also sit inside the 463 and the 1,431.

Speaker count alone does not settle status. A language with 50,000 adult speakers and no child learners is closer to death than one with 800 speakers spread across three generations, which is why the vitality scale weighs transmission rather than headcount.

Source: Ethnologue, reported by Al Jazeera, February 2026; bands are cumulative, not exclusive

Endangered Language Speaker Counts in North America

The US Census Bureau released detailed language tables in June 2025 covering more than 500 languages. Native North American language use fell 6%, from 364,331 speakers in 2013 to 342,311 in 2021, measured as people aged 5 and over who speak the language at home.

Navajo accounts for 47% of that total, so the aggregate decline conceals steeper losses further down the list. The Bureau notes that part of the year-to-year variation reflects a 2016 revision to ACS language coding, which expanded the number of language categories.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, June 2025, drawing on 2009–2013 and 2017–2021 American Community Survey 5-year estimates

Of the 29 Native North American languages with comparable data in both years, 10 declined, three grew and 16 held steady. In nine states a Native North American language ranked among the top 15 languages other than English, with New Mexico recording six. For the other side of that shift, see how bilingualism rates vary by US state.

Which Countries Have the Most Endangered Languages?

Ethnologue puts 2,484 endangered languages, 80% of the total in its 27th edition dataset, inside just 25 countries. The top four hold well over a thousand between them.

Indonesia’s own mapping tells a narrower story than the catalogue figure. Its Language Development and Guidance Agency has identified 718 regional languages and recorded 11 as extinct as of early 2024, among them Tandia in West Papua and Hukumina in Maluku. The gap reflects assessment coverage: most Indonesian languages have never had a formal government vitality assessment.

Source: Ethnologue, 27th Edition dataset

At the opposite end of the scale, English language statistics and the ranking of the most common languages worldwide track the languages absorbing these speakers.

Are Any Endangered Languages Gaining Speakers?

Two of the tracked cases below are growing, and both grew through schooling policy. Each row counts something different, so the numbers describe individual censuses rather than a common scale.

Sources: Stats NZ, 2023 Census; National Records of Scotland, Scotland’s Census 2022, published 21 May 2024; Al Jazeera, February 2026, citing the 2021 England and Wales census; AFP, October 2025

Te reo Māori rose by 27,894 people, or 15.0%, from 185,955 in 2018, and 4.3% of New Zealand residents said they could hold a conversation in it. RNZ, reporting the 2023 Census iwi data, put the share of Māori who speak te reo at 18.6%, against 18.4% in 2013.

Scotland recorded 2.5% of people aged 3 and over with some Gaelic skills in 2022, up from 1.7% in 2011, an increase of 43,100 people. Na h-Eileanan Siar was the only council area where a majority had some Gaelic, at 57.2%; Highland followed at 8.1% and every area outside the top three sat below 3%.

N|uu runs the other way. Roughly 20 elderly fluent speakers surfaced in the Northern Cape during the late 1990s, and Katrina Esau, aged 92 at the time of the AFP report, is the last. She runs a language school with her granddaughter and contributed to the first N|uu dictionary. Formal instruction is the common thread in the growth cases, a pattern also visible in learner counts for the most-studied foreign languages.

FAQ

Sources

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/2/21/where-are-the-most-endangered-languages-in-the-world

https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2025/06/native-american-language-use.html

https://www.stats.govt.nz/news/census-results-reflect-aotearoa-new-zealands-diversity/

https://www.scotlandscensus.gov.uk/2022-reports/scotland-s-census-2022-ethnic-group-national-identity-language-and-religion/