In his 1991 book, Joshua Fishman introduced an eight-level scale to measure language vitality, the Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale (GIDS). The scale focuses on a key factor in language shift, the intergenerational transmission of a language. A higher number on the scale represents a greater level of disruption in this transmission.
In 2010, Fishman’s scale was expanded by Paul Lewis and Gary Simons of SIL International as the Expanded Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale (EGIDS) to include more levels in order to allow for ”a finer-grained description of the state of intergenerational transmission in the presence of language shift”. The descriptions of the levels were reworded in 2014 in order to account for signed languages.
| Level | Label | Description | No. of languages (%) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | International | The language is widely used between nations in trade, knowledge exchange, and international policy. | 6 (0.1%) |
| 1 | National | The language is used in education, work, mass media, and government at the national level. | 97 (1.4%) |
| 2 | Provincial | The language is used in education, work, mass media, and government within major administrative subdivisions of a nation. | 75 (1.1%) |
| 3 | Wider Communication | The language is used in work and mass media without official status to transcend language differences across a region. | 164 (2.3%) |
| 4 | Educational | The language is in vigorous use, with standardization and literature being sustained through a widespread system of institutionally supported education. | 234 (3.3%) |
| 5 | Developing | The language is in vigorous use, with literature in a standardized form being used by some though this is not yet widespread or sustainable. | 1,601 (22.6%) |
| 6a | Vigorous | The language is used for face-to-face communication by all generations and the situation is sustainable. | 2,455 (34.6%) |
| 6b | Threatened | The language is used for face-to-face communication within all generations, but it is losing users. | 1,082 (15.2%) |
| 7 | Shifting | The child-bearing generation can use the language among themselves, but it is not being transmitted to children. | 465 (6.6%) |
| 8a | Moribund | The only remaining active users of the language are members of the grandparent generation and older. | 267 (3.8%) |
| 8b | Nearly Extinct | The only remaining users of the language are members of the grandparent generation or older who have little opportunity to use the language. | 436 (6.1%) |
| 9 | Dormant | The language serves as a reminder of heritage identity for an ethnic community, but no one has more than symbolic proficiency. | 217 (3.1%) |
| 10 | Extinct | The language is no longer used and no one retains a sense of ethnic identity associated with the language. | N/A |
References
edit- Bickford, Albert, J.; Lewis, Paul M.; Simons, Gary F. (2014). "Rating the vitality of sign languages". Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development. 36 (5): 513–527.
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- Fishman, Joshua A. (1991). Reversing Language Shift: Theory and Practice of Assistance to Threatened Languages. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
- Lewis, Paul M.; Simons, Gary F. (2010), Assessing Endangerment: Expanding Fisherman’s GIDS (PDF), Dallas, Texas: SIL International
- Simons, Gary F.; Fennig, Charles D., eds. (2017). "Language Status". Ethnologue: Languages of the World (20th ed.). Dallas, Texas: SIL International. Retrieved 2017-09-21.
Elfdalian
editis a North Germanic language variety