Table 1.

Databases and scales for language endangerment with the estimated percentage of endangered languages. Note that the while the words ‘extinct’, ‘dead’, ‘moribund’ and ‘dormant’ are used in these scales, they are considered inappropriate by many communities and workers in the field of endangered languages, who prefer alternative terms such as ‘Sleeping’, on the grounds that even a language with no current L1 speakers may be revitalised. The Expanded Graded Intergenerational Disrupted Scale (Lewis et al., 2013) is based on the number of L1 speakers, domains of use (e.g., government, trade, education and home), intergenerational transmission (e.g., whether being actively learned by children), official recognition and stability (whether the language is stable or declining; Grenoble and Whaley, 1998; Lewis and Simons, 2010). UNESCO ranks languages into six levels based on speaker population size, intergenerational language transmission, proportion of speakers within the total population, community attitudes, shifts in domains of use, educational materials and documentation, institutional recognition and government policies (Moseley, 2010). The Catalogue of Endangered Languages (ELCat; University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2019) uses the Language Endangerment Index (LEI), based on intergenerational transmission, domains of use, number of speakers and whether the population is increasing or decreasing (Lee and Van Way, 2016), along with an uncertainty score based on the reliability of information available (Lee and Van Way, 2018). The Agglomerated Endangered Scale (AES; Hammarström et al., 2019) takes information from other scales, preferencing LEI first, then UNESCO, then EGIDS (Hammarström et al., 2018). Alignment between scales is based on Hammarström et al. (2018)

Scale	EGIDS			AES	UNESCO	LEI
Used by	Ethnologue			Glottolog	Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger	ELCat
Accessibility	Paid licence			Open access	Open access	Open access
Languages	7,151			8,565	2,500	3,459
% Endangered	43%			63%	50%	43%
Scale	0	International	Widely used in trade, knowledge exchange and international policy	Not endangered	Safe	Safe
	1	National	Used in education, work, mass media and national government
	2	Provincial	Used in education, work, mass media and regional government
	3	Wider communication	Used in work, mass media, but without official status
	4	Educational	Vigorous use with standardisation and literature, and supported education
	5	Developing	Vigorous use with literature but not widespread or sustainable
		Dispersed	Used in home country, standardised form and literature, but not promoted in education
	6a	Vigorous	Sustainably used for face-to-face communication by all generations
	6b	Threatened	Used for face-to-face communication within all generations, but losing users	Threatened	Vulnerable	Vulnerable
	7	Shifting	Child-bearing generation use among themselves, not transmitting to children	Shifting	Definitely endangered	Threatened
						Endangered
	8a	Moribund	Used only by grandparent generation and older	Moribund	Severely endangered	Severely endangered
	8b	Nearly extinct	Limited use by grandparent generation only	Nearly extinct	Critically endangered	Critically endangered
	9	Dormant	Serves as a reminder of heritage identity, but use is symbolic	Extinct	Extinct	Dormant
		Reawakening	Community working to establish users of once-dormant language			Awakening
						Second language only
	10	Extinct	Not used and no current association with ethnic identity			Extinct