Comments on: 230 - Papua New Guinea, the Linguistic Superpower

By: Strummer

Strummer — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 04:52:52 +0000

Where is Russia, it has a lot of languages, I had to do a paper on the different languages and ethnicities of the Russian Federation.

By: Simon Pepin Lehalleur

Simon Pepin Lehalleur — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 14:43:13 +0000

Jared Diamond’s book “Guns, germs and steel”, among various other fascinating topics, discusses the linguistic oddities of Papua New Guinea and contains a large bibliography on that subject.

By: Roasting and Arrivals « Coffee Blog

Roasting and Arrivals « Coffee Blog — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 16:52:20 +0000

[...] way for Tom to share his travels with the customers. And on pictures and Papua New Guinea, check this out. It’s amazing that one place has such a density of human [...]

By: Bellie Jayaprakash

Bellie Jayaprakash — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 02:53:35 +0000

You have listed India with only 387 languages. I do not know what is your source of information but being an Indian, I can safely say there more than 500 languages [in the least]

By: International Mother Language Day « Everyday’s a Holiday

International Mother Language Day « Everyday’s a Holiday — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 03:57:12 +0000

[...] http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2008/01/02/230-papua-new-guinea-the-linguistic-superpower/ [...]

By: sandy

sandy — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 23:38:01 +0000

Indeed, rugged terrain may explain lack of development, which of course in turn would explain continued discovery of species. Another related, but more developed theory, however could explain the huge number of languages…Over the settlement of the island, small family groups settled, and in protection of their small areas of territory, developed social rules that kept these small groups from passing through the land understood to be used by other groups, usually at the pain of death. So, most folks just kept to themselves, and as in evolution, when groups are isolated, be they salamanders or elephants or people, aspects of their genetics and culture slowly mutate and change (apologies to anti-evolutionary adherants). So, slowly, the languages brought to PNG slowly began morphing into many - first as dialects, and over time becoming mutually unintelligible and therefore, separate languages.

By: Trampa 22 :: ¿Quiere Europa ser Papúa Nueva Guinea? :: February :: 2008

Trampa 22 :: ¿Quiere Europa ser Papúa Nueva Guinea? :: February :: 2008 — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 17:58:03 +0000

[...] de preocuparse en decir cosas intelectualmente poco rentables pero más prácticas. (Mapa de lenguas: el tamaño del país es acorde al número de idiomas que [...]

By: Amber

Amber — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 14:20:06 +0000

By: fourth edition » Mapping the World

fourth edition » Mapping the World — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 18:03:15 +0000

[...] had Nazi Germany conquered it. Personally I like looking at maps that challenge my preconceptions - who knew that Papau New Guinea is such a polyglot society that it dwarfs the rest of the world? Or that Great Britain could easily fit within Borneo? If you [...]

By: concretefields » Blog Archive » here’s something linguists do…

Sat, 02 Feb 2008 21:57:55 +0000

[...] if you’re interested, here’s a representative world map indicating countries sizes by the number of languages spoken there. The country names are in [...]