The Register
What the Linguasphere Register is
A single numbered frame that tries to hold every spoken language on the planet — and a way of writing down where each one sits.
The Linguasphere Register of the World’s Languages and Speech Communities is a classification published by the Observatoire linguistique. Instead of a flat list of language names it builds an address system: the whole of human speech is cut into ten sectors, each sector into ten zones, and each zone into progressively tighter groupings down to the individual variety.
That produces a code — the linguascale — which can be read like a postal address. 53-AAA-eab is not a label stuck on Russian; it is a route to it, through the Slavic zone, the Russian net and the Russian outer language.
This site publishes that frame in a form you can walk through. Every zone opens into the sets, chains, nets and languages recorded under it, every entry carries its code, and the countries the Register attaches to an entry each have a page of their own.
The eight levels, in order
| Level | What it is | Example code | Example entry |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sector | One of ten top divisions of the whole linguasphere. Five are phylosectors (grouped by descent), five are geosectors (grouped by region). | 0= | AFRICA |
| Zone | Ten zones inside each sector, numbered 00 to 99 across the whole scale. | 00= | MANDIC |
| Set | The first grouping inside a zone, marked by a single capital letter. | 00-A | MANDINKA + MENDE |
| Chain | A closer grouping inside a set, marked by two capitals. | 00-AA | MANDINKA + SOSO |
| Net | The tightest grouping of related languages, marked by three capitals. | 00-AAA | MANDINKA + BAMANAN |
| Outer language | What most people would simply call a language, marked by a small letter. | 00-AAA-a | Mandinka + Khasonka |
| Inner language | A variety inside an outer language — often a dialect in everyday speech. | 00-AAA-aa | mandinka-kango |
| Variety | A named form of an inner language: a written standard, a register, a period. | 53-AAA-eab | russkiy-F |