Where Data Tells the Story
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Language is part of culture.
In some countries, you could walk through a single street and hear five different languages in ten minutes; that’s how incredible linguistic diversity can be.
In this explainer, we focus on the top countries for language diversity.
The data for these insights is retrieved from Ethnologue.
It's a leading global database that tracks and documents all living languages worldwide.
What makes the difference is that some small countries have a high level of language diversity.
For instance, Papua New Guinea, with a population of less than 20 million, has around 841 languages, which is more than the combined total of many large countries.
Meanwhile, countries with large populations, such as India and China, accommodate hundreds of languages, but their per-capita language density is relatively low.
This suggests that linguistic complexity is not solely a function of population size; other factors, such as geography, history, and isolation, also play a role.