Posted on August 12, 2014

How Many Languages are Available for Bible Reading Online?

Posted on August 12, 2014 by .BIBLE Registry Categories: Online Presence

In the world today, there are thousands of languages being used, with a majority of them not yet on the Internet. And the Bible is not yet translated into many of those languages either.

First, consider just how many languages are being used in the world today. According to A Guide to the World’s Languages: Classification, Volume I by Merritt Ruhlen, there are “roughly 5,000 languages.” The Linguistic Society of America (in How Many Languages Are There in the World?) noted that:

“Much pioneering work in documenting the languages of the world has been done by missionary organizations… with an interest in translating the Christian Bible… The most extensive catalog of the world’s languages, generally taken to be as authoritative as any, is that of Ethnologue (published by SIL International), whose detailed classified list as of 2009 included 6,909 distinct languages.”

At the time of this post (August 2014), Ethnologue lists 7,106 known living languages. By Wycliffe‘s count, there are 6,918 living languages, 4,101 with no Scripture at all, and only 513 with the entire Bible (both Old and New Testaments), as illustrated by this graph courtesy of distantshores.org —

These are the online Bible websites with the most languages (not counting exactly which languages is provided where, and not counting different versions) ::

Wow. There’s a lot of languages, and we’ve got a long way to go for the Internet and the Bible to reach all peoples in their own languages. And, by the way, Google Translate currently supports 80 languages.

[update 10/26/17] The website Progress.Bible will be the one place that provides a comprehensive view of Bible translation across the world, based on language—including translation need, program status, and available products.