Most Spoken Endangered Languages in the World
About This Dataset
Most Spoken Endangered Languages in the World
Languages classified as vulnerable or endangered by UNESCO's Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger, ranked by estimated number of remaining speakers. While some major languages like Sicilian and Venetian retain millions of speakers, they face increasing pressure from dominant national languages and lack formal education support.
Analysis
Sicilian (Italy) heads the table on 5,000,000, ahead of Venetian (Italy) (3,900,000) and Bavarian (Germany) (3,700,000) in Estimated Speakers. 4,998,200 separates the highest figure (5,000,000) from the lowest (1,800) in Estimated Speakers. First and second are separated by 1,100,000, so the leader sits inside the field rather than apart from it. Only 4 of the 8 reach even half the leader's figure (2,500,000 or more).
Source:
UNESCO
Key Findings
🏆
Sicilian (Italy) leads in Estimated Speakers with 5,000,000.
📊
Average Estimated Speakers: 2,288,163 · median: 2,350,000.
↔️
Gap: Sicilian (Italy) is 2,777.8× larger than Manx (Isle of Man).
Data Insights
Numbers, trends & sources behind this chart
Methodology & source
- Data source
- UNESCO
- Coverage
- 8 entities · 8 observations
- Measure
- Estimated Speakers
- Last updated
- 6 September 2026
- Compiled by
- The ANYSTAT team, from the source above
How the figures are calculated
- Values are shown as reported by the source. Nothing is rescaled, rebased or converted — the only changes are thousand separators and decimals shown to two places.
- Entities are ranked highest-first on their value.
Data Sources & References
All external sources cited in this dataset
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