pyglottolog

Programmatic access to Glottolog data.

[!NOTE]
Accessing Glottolog data programmatically has become a lot easier with the Glottolog CLDF dataset. Thus, pyglottolog now mostly serves as internal data curation tool.

Install

To install pyglottolog you need a python installation on your system, running python >3.8. Run

pip install pyglottolog

This will also install the command line interface glottolog.

Note: To make use of pyglottolog you also need a local copy of the Glottolog data. This can be

a clone of the glottolog/glottolog repository or your fork of it,
an unzipped released version of Glottolog from GitHub,
or an unzipped download of a released version of Glottolog from ZENODO.

Make sure you remember where this local copy of the data is located - you may have to pass this location as option when using pyglottolog.

A convenient way to clone the data repository, keep it updated and access it from pyglottolog is provided by cldfbench. See the README for details.

Python API

Using pyglottolog, Glottolog data can be accessed programmatically from within python programs. All functionality is mediated through an instance of pyglottolog.Glottolog, e.g.

>>> from pyglottolog import Glottolog
>>> glottolog = Glottolog('.')
>>> print(glottolog)
<Glottolog repos v0.2-259-g27ac0ef at /.../glottolog>

For details, refer to the API documentation at readthedocs.

Command line interface

Command line functionality is implemented via sub-commands of glottolog. The list of available sub-commands can be inspected running

$ glottolog -h
usage: glottolog [-h] [--log-level LOG_LEVEL] [--repos REPOS]
                 [--repos-version REPOS_VERSION]
                 COMMAND ...

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --log-level LOG_LEVEL
                        log level [ERROR|WARN|INFO|DEBUG] (default: 20)
  --repos REPOS         clone of glottolog/glottolog
  --repos-version REPOS_VERSION
                        version of repository data. Requires a git clone!
                        (default: None)

available commands:
  Run "COMAMND -h" to get help for a specific command.

  COMMAND
    create              Create a new languoid directory for a languoid
                        specified by name and level.
    edit                Open a languoid's INI file in a text editor.
    htmlmap             Create an HTML/Javascript map (using leaflet) of
                        Glottolog languoids.
    iso2codes           Map ISO codes to the list of all Glottolog languages
                        and dialects subsumed "under" it.
    langdatastats       List all metadata fields used in languoid INI files
                        and their frequency.
    show                Display details of a Glottolog object.
    tree                Print the classification tree starting at a specific
                        languoid.

Extracting languoid data

Glottolog data is often integrated with other data or incorporated as reference data in tools, e.g. as LanguageTable in a CLDF dataset.

To do this, the LanguageTable from glottolog/glottolog-cldf can be copied.

Release files for pyglottolog 4.0.1

For a detailed explanation of source distributions (sdists) and built distributions (wheels), please see the package formats documentation.

Source distribution (sdist)

Source distribution for pyglottolog 4.0.1
File	Size	Uploaded
pyglottolog-4.0.1.tar.gz	6.7 MB	May 14, 2026	Details

Built distribution (wheel)

Table of built distributions (wheels) for pyglottolog 4.0.1
File	Interpreter	ABI	Platform	Reset
pyglottolog-4.0.1-py2.py3-none-any.whl 6.7 MB May 14, 2026	Python 2, Python 3	none	any	Details

Total release size:13.4 MB

Release files / pyglottolog-4.0.1.tar.gz

Download URL	pyglottolog-4.0.1.tar.gz
Size	6.7 MB
Tags	Source
SHA-256 checksum How to use checksums	`8e6d65af6f515d33626fd51a519ee54ea078a5668f28301e5f15f5f72f693a66`
BLAKE2b-256 checksum How to use checksums	`f855c38d55d6921d1c33ab1c5fd4bf9999ec26dd4e805bd1c0979e68fef8c757`
Upload date	May 14, 2026
Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? What is trusted publishing?	No
Uploaded via	`twine/5.1.1 CPython/3.12.3`

Release files / pyglottolog-4.0.1-py2.py3-none-any.whl

Download URL	pyglottolog-4.0.1-py2.py3-none-any.whl
Size	6.7 MB
Tags	Python 2 Python 3
SHA-256 checksum How to use checksums	`86038eb420ea66d1df1ebcf218037090205ed786ee5cac04984b054f58c0a171`
BLAKE2b-256 checksum How to use checksums	`c39a211513d2fa239b42858c4f716012ed2f54cbe85048896ba0077f204ffc80`
Upload date	May 14, 2026
Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? What is trusted publishing?	No
Uploaded via	`twine/5.1.1 CPython/3.12.3`