Summer Institute of Linguistics

SIL works with over 1,300 communities worldwide (impacting more than one billion speakers) as they build their capacity for sustainable development with their own languages. Language development involves ongoing planned actions that a language community takes to ensure that its language continues to serve its changing social, cultural, political, economic and spiritual needs and goals. SIL's expertise includes training and consulting in linguistic analysis, orthography and writing systems development, literature development (including translation) and mother tongue-based multilingual education and literacy. SIL publishes Ethnologue, an authoritative resource on world languages, referencing more than 7,000 languages. Additionally, SIL’s Language & Culture Archives hosts more than 81,000 catalogued entries of language materials representing over 4,000 languages. These materials include dictionaries, primers, academic papers and traditional stories. Language communities benefit by access to important information preserved for present and future generations.