Welcome to Glottolog/Langdoc. This site provides comprehensive bibliographical and other reference information for the world's languages, especially the lesser known languages.

Information about the different languages, dialects, and families of the world ('languoids') is available in the Glottolog section. The Langdoc section contains bibliographical information. You can query the bibliographical database with in the a normal query or a complex query involving genealogical affiliation, document type, and macro-area. Finally, you can create a stratified and balanced language sample.

Glottolog is a comprehensive catalogue of the world's languages, language families and dialects. It provides a conservative genealogical classification (the Glottolog tree) which assigns a unique and stable ID number for (potentially) all languoids, i.e. all families, languages, and dialects (and in the future also sociolects). Any variety that a linguist works on should eventually get its own entry.

Langdoc is a comprehensive collection of bibliographical data for the world's lesser known languages. It provides access to more than 180,000 references of descriptive works such as grammars, dictionaries, word lists, texts etc. Search criteria include author, year, title, document type, macro‐area, and genealogical affiliation. References can be downloaded as txt, bib, html, or with the Zotero Firefox plugin.

Both Glottolog and Langdoc will be continuously expanded and improved with the help of their users. The input of expert linguists is crucial.

Glottolog and Langdoc are initiatives of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and are developed and maintained by Sebastian Nordhoff and Harald Hammarström. Important contributors to the Langdoc database are Alain Fabre, Jouni Majo and SIL. For more details, see the Credits page.