is colleagues at SIL International as well
as with other language researchers. Richard Pittman was the editor of
the 1st to 7th editions (1951-1969).

Barbara Grimes was the editor of the 8th to 14th editions (1971-2000).
She wrote in January 2000: "It is a catalog of the languages of the
world, with information about where they are spoken, an estimate of the
number of speakers, what language family they are in, alternate names,
names of dialects, other socio-linguistic and demographic information,
dates of published Bibles, a name index, a language family index, and
language maps." In 1971, information was expanded from primarily
minority languages to encompass all known languages of the world.
Between 1967 and 1973, she completed an in-depth revision of the
information on Africa, the Americas, the Pacific, and a few countries
of Asia. During her years as editor, the number of identified languages
grew from 4,493 to 6,809. The information recorded on each language
expanded so that the published work more than tripled in size.

In 2000, Raymond Gordon Jr. became the third editor of the Ethnologue
and produced the 15th edition (2005). Shortly after the publication of
the 15th edition, Paul Lewis became the editor, responsible for general
oversight and research policy. He installed Conrad Hurd as managing
editor, responsible for operations and database management, and Raymond
Gordon as senior research editor, leading a team of regional and
language-family focused research editors.

In the Introduction of its latest edition (16th edition, 2009), the
Ethnologue defines a language as such: "How one chooses to define a
language depends on the purposes one has in identifying that language
as distinct from another. Some base their definition on purely
linguistic grounds. Others recognize that social, cultural, or
political factors must also be taken into account. In addition,
speakers themselves often have their own perspectives on what makes a
particular language uniquely theirs. Those are frequently related to
issues of heritage and identity much more than to the linguistic
features of the language(s) in question."

As explained in the Introduction, one feature of the database since its
inception has been a system of three-letter language identifiers, that
appeared in the publication itself from the 10th edition (1984)
onwards. "In 1998, the International Organization for Standardization
(ISO) adopted ISO 639-2, a standar