Counting the world’s languages: the politics and discontents of enumeration

The concern with establishing the number of the world’s extant languages appeared in Europe during the 18th century. In the 20th century, anthropological research drove this exercise, alongside the need to deal with an increase in publications produced in a variety of non-European languages across the decolonized states. Meanwhile, during the past two centuries, the counting of languages was underpinned with the millenarist program of translating the Bible into all the world’s languages. The end of the Cold War heralded the rise of the internet. Only the languages that are officially ‘counted’ (enumerated and supplied with standardized codes) feature in cyberspace.