The Catalogue of Endangered Languages (ELCat)

The Catalogue of Endangered Languages (ELCat) project is a joint undertaking by The LINGUIST List and the University of Hawai'i Mānoa, with support from the NSF (BCS-1057725). ELCat is a three-year project, begun in the fall of 2011; the findings of the first phase are now available at the Endangered Languages Project website. The primary goal of ELCat is to produce a comprehensive, reliable, up-to-date source of information about the world's endangered languages. To that end, the ELCat project is committed to the following objectives:

• To compile all available information into one easily accessible catalogue;
• To encourage speaker communities, scholars, and the public to contribute up-to-date knowledge about endangered languages;
• To foster collaboration between speaker communities, scholars, and the public, and to facilitate language documentation and preservation efforts; and
• To continue to compile and distribute the latest information on endangered languages and their speakers.

Phase I of the project involves gathering data on languages' speaker numbers, vitality status, locations, and use contexts; phase II expands the Catalogue to include a measure of how much documentation exists for each language. The data in ELCat is gathered by a team of linguists and linguistics graduate students; it is then reviewed by the ELCat Regional Directors, a global panel of experts in the languages of particular areas. The ELCat Regional Directors are:

• Willem F.H. Adelaar, Universiteit Leiden (Regional Director for South America)
• Greg Anderson, Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages (Regional Director for South Asia)
• I. Wayan Arka, Australian National University (Regional Director for Indonesia)
• Habib Borjian, Encyclopedia Iranica (Regional Director for the Near East)
• Claire Bowern, Yale University (Regional Director for Australia)
• David Bradley, La Trobe University (Regional Director for East Asia)
• Matthias Brenzinger, University of Cape Town (Regional Director for Africa)
• Lyle Campbell, University of Hawai'i Mānoa (Regional Director for the Americas)
• Charles Häberl, Rutgers University (Regional Director for the Near East)
• Alice C. Harris, University of Massachusetts Amherst (Regional Director for the Caucasus)
• Brian Joseph, Ohio State University (Regional Director for Europe)
• Juha Janhunen, University of Helsinki (Regional Director for Northern and Central Eurasia)
• Martin Maiden, University of Oxford (Regional Director for Romance languages)
• Bill Palmer, University of Newcastle (Regional Director for the Pacific)
• Keren Rice, University of Toronto (Regional Director for North America)
• David Solnit, SIL International (Regional Director for East and Southeast Asia)
• George Van Driem, Bern University (Regional Director for Himalayas and adjacent)
• James Woodward, University of Hawai'i Mānoa (Regional Director for sign languages)

The ELCat team at The LINGUIST List is responsible for gathering data on the languages of Africa and Australia, and for designing and building the ELCat database. The University of Hawai'i team gathers data on the languages of the Americas, Europe, Asia, and the Pacific. The ELCat team at LINGUIST List has included:

• Helen Aristar-Dry (Principal Investigator)
• Anthony Aristar (Principal Investigator)
• Naomi Palosaari (Project Director)
• Anna Belew (Project Manager)
• Lwin Moe (ELCat Programmer)
• Amy Brunett (Student Researcher)
• Jacob Collard (Intern)
• Kristen Dunkinson (Student Researcher)
• Brent Woo (Student Researcher)

This is just the beginning.The ELCat research is not yet complete, and we will continue to improve the catalogue through 2014, when the project ends. As a community-driven resource, ELCat welcomes feedback from its user community, including scholars, speaker communities, and the public. We strongly encourage users to contact us with comments, questions, or suggestions regarding the catalogue; this input will be of great value to the ELCat team as we move forward with the project.