<p>The extinction of languages has markedly increased since the nineteenth century, resulting in global language endangerment and the erosion of cultural diversity and knowledge systems. While factors such as writing system, official use, geographical distribution, historical contexts, and economic conditions have typically been examined in isolation, global language endangerment cannot be understood without considering their combined effects. To capture these higher-order interactions, this study introduces a framework that elucidates endangerment as the outcome of five major factors. Using a three-layer language–country bipartite network for 7010 languages stratified by writing system and official use, the study addresses three questions on interactions related to geographical distribution, historical contexts, and economic conditions. High-risk areas fall into written-severe, unwritten-severe, and both-severe areas, depending on the presence of writing systems. Six historical contexts are associated with language endangerment, with extractive and settler colonisation showing the most consistent associations, regardless of writing systems and official use. National wealth level, not income inequality, is associated with endangerment among unofficially used languages without writing systems. Finally, random forest regression examines the relative importance of these factors and identifies five types of languages overlooked by existing evaluation frameworks, thus offering potential policy implications.</p>