The book Limits of Language by Swedish linguist Mikael Parkvall is a sort of languages-only Guinness Book of Records, listing everything that’s large, small and otherwise interesting about the manifold manners of human speech and associated forms of communication. One item deals with the world’s most linguistically diverse countries, and is illustrated with this map, of the world’s ‘linguistic superpowers’. The caption reads:
“Languages are very unevenly distributed among the countries of the world. The map tries to capture this fact by rendering each country in a size corresponding to the number of languages spoken in it. (Because of the inherent problems in accomplishing this, sizes are rather approximate). The ten shaded countries are those in which more than 200 languages are in use.”
The Ethnologue, cited a bit further, only lists 9 countries with more than 200 languages, however. Here are the 12 top countries:
Papua New Guinea 823 languages
Indonesia 726
Nigeria 505
India 387
Mexico 288
Cameroon 279
Australia 235
DR Congo 218
China 201
Brazil 192
United States 176
Philippines 169
It’s curious how the linguistically most diverse country in the world is Papua New Guinea – because it’s also the place with the biggest biodiversity anywhere, one of the last places in the world where new species get discovered regularly. I wonder whether there’s a single explanation for both phenomena.
I was alerted to this map by Bjørn A. Bojesen; Mr Parkvall himself was kind enough to provide me with this map. Here’s a link to his book on Amazon, warmly recommended for anyone both language- and trivia-obsessed.
As might appear obvious from the map used in above post, I’m having some issues with the resizing of large images. Does anyone have any idea how to do this on a Mac (using OS X) - there don’t seem to be any standard programmes provided which could be used for resizing… Or can anyone recommend freeware?
Comment by strangemaps — January 2, 2008 @
Perhaps the dense jungle and rugged terrain in New Guinea are responsible; they prevent modern development that destroys biodiversity, and cuts villages off from each other, maintaining linguistic diversity.
Bringing PNG into the 21st century will probably destroy both types of diversity…
Comment by Andrew M — January 2, 2008 @
You should be able to resize images using Preview, the built-in image viewer. Have you looked through the menus there?
Comment by Jobjörn — January 2, 2008 @
@strangemaps:
The GIMP is a free and open source image manipulation program. It can do most anything, including resizing. To resize, first open an image to work with, then the image menu > scale image > enter a new dimension, and it should be scaled proportionally.
Comment by SoloSalsa — January 2, 2008 @
I’m surprised Canada doesn’t even break into the top 12 - in Toronto alone, there are probably at least 7 or 8 major languages that you come across on a daily basis, and I’m sure there are countless dozens of smaller groups.
Comment by Dave — January 2, 2008 @
GraphicConverter is a shareware image editor for Mac OS X which will let you resize images and much more.
It is available for download from http://www.lemkesoft.com
Comment by Kris — January 2, 2008 @
use ImageMagick - it’s free, open source and cross platform. The resize is very easy and fast there - see http://www.imagemagick.org/Usage/resize/#resize
Comment by Mirritil — January 2, 2008 @
Dave, I hear ya. The amount of aboriginal languages spoken in Canada alone left me wondering why it wasn’t seen on this list.
Comment by Jere — January 2, 2008 @
Being a Filipino, I was impressed, long ago, when I came across the fact that there were nearly 170 languages there. Then one of my older relatives explained to me that most were regional dialects, and in reality there were probably only 11 truly distinct languages. (Of course, there’s an old Filipino joke about this. When a visitor hears about all the languages, he asks, “Wait, so which language do you use so you understand each other?” The answer? “English.”)
As for the Canada question, I think that perhaps there are a lot of languages, but there are fewer people. Wikipedia shows it as #36 in population. By comparison, Indonesia is #4, Nigeria is #8, India is #2… you’re bound to have a greater variety of languages with more people. Plus, as a developed nation, Canadians now primarily speak English or French with other languages falling by the wayside. In countries where people don’t rely so much on TV, radio, or computers, indigenous languages have longer staying power.
Comment by El Santo — January 2, 2008 @
You should read “Guns, Germs and Steel”, which talks about linguistic diversity and the forces that shape human distribution.
Andrew M is on the right track - the same deep isolated valleys that kept tribes from interacting, which led to linguistic shifts, also separate the fauna and flora, allowing more speciation in a smaller area.
Comment by Zyada — January 2, 2008 @
I’m not quite sure I understand; are they talking about native languages? In the giant language count for the US, for example, are they talking about Native American languages, or immigrant languages?
Comment by Lia — January 2, 2008 @
The diversity in Papua New Guinea is due to the geographic fractioning of the island - entire ecosystems, and their native inhabitants, are virtually inaccessible from the shore.
Comment by Nigel Watt — January 2, 2008 @
How this blog works to put maps on it
Comment by Jana — January 2, 2008 @
The African nations have the added advantage in this count of being where language started and diversified for generations before moving outward.
The US is the only one on the list with large numbers of non-native languages in its total. The others all have variations of the PNG explanation above: an abundance of small isolated groups.
Comment by Assistant Village Idiot — January 3, 2008 @
You could also use ImageWell to resize your images. Freeware if I’m not mistaken.
Comment by toadhall81 — January 3, 2008 @
If you want to resize your picture BEFORE uploading it, you can try IrfanVew which is a free download at http://www.tucows.com/preview/194967
I have nothing to gain by it, I am not pushing it, it is just the one I use.
Comment by Caroleau — January 3, 2008 @
Unrelated suggestion for a strange map: the cover of “Common Ground: Around Britain in Thirty Writers” (Cyan Books) ISBN 1-904879-93-4.
And all the best for 2008!
Comment by António MARTINS-Tuválkin — January 3, 2008 @
Toronto alone has 100 spoken languages in use, as I recall. If Canada’s not in the top 12, it ought to be in the top 15.
strangemaps - Why not set the image width tag to whatever the column width is? Then you don’t have to mess around with image software.
Comment by rek — January 3, 2008 @
You never cease to amaze. I learn so much more coming to your site than any examination of the political blogs. Thanks!
Comment by rationalpsychic — January 3, 2008 @
thanks. good stuff.
Comment by startupcompany — January 3, 2008 @
Take a look at Papua New Guinea with Google Maps’ new Terrain layer on (http://tinyurl.com/yqggoa) Zooming in on the Highlands will really show the rugged terrain, with deep valleys separated by high mountains.
However, its more than just terrain. The tribal system is called “wontok” (one-talk) in Tok Pisin - interesting that the concept of language defining tribal groups is inherent in the term.
Age-old “payback” feuds maintain barriers between tribes in neighbouring valleys - in the old days if you strayed you’d be eaten. Literally. Doesn’t really encourage travel and mixing!
Comment by Rob Roy — January 3, 2008 @
[...] Papua New Guinea, the Linguistic Superpower [...]
Pingback by Daily Links 01/03/2008 « Umbrella — January 3, 2008 @
For those who wonder why Canada and other countries are not in the top ten, these lists only include indigenous languages. Otherwise, a country like the United States would easily have over a thousand languages.
El Santo raises a good point. Linguists are divided between splitters and lumpers over the division between dialects and full-blown languages. That’s why the estimate of the total number of tongues in the world can vary between 6,000 and 12,000.
Comment by Relwarc — January 3, 2008 @
In this case, you probably don’t want to resize the image before uploading. Instead, use the “width” and “height” attributes on the IMG tag in your HTML page.
If you’re having trouble getting HTML out of your Web page editor, ask a teenager for help. :)
Comment by Anonymous Cowherd — January 3, 2008 @
You could resize on a mac like this: Save map file into your iPhoto collection. Then export the photo from iPhoto to the desktop. Do this and you get the option to specify the file format you want to export it in and the image height and width attributes. Once that’s done you can upload it to your blog from the desktop using your browser.
Comment by kenanddot — January 3, 2008 @
Great blog by the way!
Comment by kenanddot — January 3, 2008 @
Ditto on the Canada comments: like Relwarc says, the map is for indigenous languages only, nor does it take into account how many speakers a language has. It probably doesn’t even count English and French for Canada, let alone Hindi or Mandarin — just Cree and Mi’kmaq and the like (although I wonder at what point an “immigrant” tongue starts to be considered “native”).
Since linguistic diversity is facing the same crisis of extinction that’s looming over biodiverse regions, it’ll be interesting what this map will look like projected into the future. I am guessing many of the indigenous languages of the US are on death’s door, for example — while PNG should remain fairly robust thanks to its geography… Until someone there discovers oil, anyway, or a way to farm cattle for burgers on mountain slopes.
Comment by Orbis — January 3, 2008 @
Excellent point, Orbis; I’ve always thought the term “indigenous” to be a little arbitrary. Is English even indigenous to England, considering its origins in two languages spoken by medieval-era invaders of Great Britain?
Comment by Huntington — January 4, 2008 @
Re. Huntington, since the modern English language originated in Britain it is considered indigenous. English was imported in it’s modern form to Canada. If it had diverged into a seperate language there it would be considered indigenous, in the way Afrikaans is seen as indigenous to South Africa. English and French are probably included in Canada’s language count as they have official status, but other groups like Italian, German, or the different Chinese languages would not be counted since they have no official status, even though each one on it’s own dwarfs the combined speakers of all the countries “native” languages.
Comment by Relwarc — January 4, 2008 @
Russia should be somewhere in top 5 at least. Russian administered part of Caucasus is a veritable “Papua New Guinea” of languages.
Comment by sambrasa — January 4, 2008 @
good stuff! I was amazed with this information, I am a filipina too, and even I, I can speak 3 languages,(fluently)and 1 gay lingua, and some other dialects that i’m trying to learn,I even understand quite spanish but just slow ,,it’s nature here in the phils,if you’re living here, u can speak and learn at least 3 languages…
Comment by irene15ph — January 4, 2008 @
Thanks, Relwarc; I’d never heard that definition of an indigenous language before, but it makes sense. I wonder, though, how Xhosa and Zulu would feel about calling Afrikaans indigenous to South Africa, since Afrikaners are not. Is the language sufficiently different from Dutch to have fulfill the requirements you give?
By that definition, Tok Pisin would be considered indigenous to Papua New Guinea, of course. I wonder if advances in communications technology will make new indigenous languages impossible sometime soon, since we’re all becoming less isolated.
Comment by Huntington — January 4, 2008 @
I second the suggestion of ImageMagick. You need to be marginally comfortable with command-line tools, but it’s so much quicker and more straightforward than some bloated monster like the GIMP. Although as the stockman with no name says, the best thing to do is to put up the full-sized image file and then reduce it in the HTML; then, if someone wants to see it in more detail, they can just view the image.
Comment by Tom Anderson — January 4, 2008 @
[...] Papua New Guinea, the Linguistic Superpower [Strange Maps] “It’s curious how the linguistically most diverse country in the world is Papua New Guinea – because it’s also the place with the biggest biodiversity anywhere…” (tags: maps language papuanewguinea) [...]
Pingback by links for 2008-01-04 < Travelers Diagram — January 4, 2008 @
Relwarc’s comment is inaccurate. Ethnologue’s database does not include any arbitrary definition of “indigenousness”. Of course Afrikaans is an African language. What else could it be? (And yes, most linguists would consider it to be distinct enough from Dutch to be its own language.)
Anyhow just check Ethnologue’s website, the info is all there. It lists 238 US languages, including English, French, Pennsylvania Dutch, Hmong, etc. besides Navaho, Kutenai, Micmac, etc. There’s a list of 89 languages for Canada.
What I think is being counted here — and trying to count such things strikes me as extremely difficult — are viable (established) “language communities”. If a group of immigrants form their own neighborhood, with stores, schools, places of worship, a newspaper, etc. then they should probably be counted. In this area at least, Ethnologue probably does have an “indigenousness” bias. Languages which are “indigenous” to a country are counted even when they have fallen below the viabitiy threshold, while immigrant languages won’t be.
Comment by Philip Spaelti — January 5, 2008 @
A note of correction (clarification?) to my previous comment.
Actually Ethnologue’s (varying) numbers are a bit trickier than what I stated. The spoken languages of a country are listed, but not necessarily included in the count. So in my statement about the USA, English, (Cajun) French, and Pennsylvania German are counted, but not Hmong (which is only listed at the top of the page). Also in the case of the USA, the number 238 includes apparently extinct languages (of which there are many in the US). The living languages are given as 162, mostly “indigenous”, with about a dozen “immigrant” (including things like AMESLAN.) The 89 Canadian language are almost all living languages.
In the end, the real reason for these arbitrary distinctions resides in Ethnologue’s mission. Ethnologue is provided to us by SIL, and they are not really that interested in surveying immigrant languages that are well established in a home country.
Comment by Philip Spaelti — January 5, 2008 @
Re. Philip. I never mentioned Ethnologues setup in my comments. Someone asked what constituted an indigenous language and I give the answer as I understand it. But you do have a point about Ethnologue not operating with any set definition of what is and is not a native language. Cajun French can be seen as “American” in that that dialect developed in the United States and not France. The same could be said of Pennsylcania German. But on the other hand, it also includes Platsdeutch for many Latin American countries where it has only been recently introduced and has no special history.
So as long as no objective guidelines are in place and inclusion or exclusion is purely a value judgment.
Comment by Relwarc — January 5, 2008 @
to resize, try free IrfanView - after install, open a pic - under File, click on “batch conversion/rename”
thanks for the great maps!
Comment by Nigel j Watson — January 5, 2008 @
on the resizing of the images, don’t install any unnecessary software like the GIMP or graphicconverter. they are headaches. don’t install any software at all. don’t do anything different than what you’re doing currently. upload the same large-size files, but when you are creating your post, click on the “Code” tab at the top, where you’ll see the html code for the image. it should look like
pick a pixel width you want for the image. like 450 is probably reasonable. and type width=”450″ before the / right at the end of the tag. so now you’ll have
that way, on the main blog page you’ll have images that fit, but that still link to the full sized images, so that we, your loving readers, can still download the large files and enjoy them.
Comment by jay — January 6, 2008 @
I would advise against all the well-meaning people who have told you to just use or similar. That width attribute should actually be represented by a line in the CSS. But (X)HTML/CSS holy wars aside, there’s a very good reason to resize the image yourself: browsers are unpredictable.
With image manipulation software (I like GraphicConverter if I’m on a Mac), you can ensure that your image is as clear as possible after resizing; browsers will use whatever’s fastest, which may be of lower quality. Always plan to display your images at their native size so you know exactly how they’ll look in your readers’ browsers.
Comment by TheRabbi — January 6, 2008 @
TheRabbi: “native size” … don’t you mean “indigenous size”? ;)
Comment by Huntington — January 6, 2008 @
OOOH you’ve done it. Well done.
Biologicaaly diverse as well. It aint going to last though;-(
Comment by lordhutton — January 6, 2008 @
[...] New Guinea, the Linguistic Superpower08-01-2008 om 15:14 door Carlos Het land tijdens de klimaattop op Bali de sterkste tekst had tegen de VS (”If you don’t … Cultuur, Geografie, Oceanië, Papua Nieuw Guinea, Taal, Waan v/d Dag Terug naar het [...]
Pingback by Papua New Guinea, the Linguistic Superpower - Sargasso — January 8, 2008 @
[...] it interesting that Papua New Guinea has the world’s greatest linguistic diversity as well as its greatest biodiversity? Take [...]
Pingback by Where biodiversity goes, so goes my ethnolinguistic biodiversity : BedlamBlog — January 15, 2008 @
I’d heard once of a custom among some Papua New Guineans that you cannot marry someone who speaks the same language as you, natively, thus leading to some crazy multilingualism. I’m not sure how it works out though, because if your mom and dad speak a different language, and their grandparents each speak a different language, how easy is it to find someone who speaks something different? The statistics certainly imply that it would be easier in Papua New Guinea than elsewhere, but I wonder. Anyway, entertaining rumor.
Comment by Ryan — January 15, 2008 @
The Rabbi has got a point, I always resize pictures myself so that I know they will look as good as possible (sometimes it just won’t look good whatever you try, for instance if it’s too detailed, and you may want to opt for showing a - resized - part rather than the whole). Then I upload the original and the resized picture to a seperate site and use the links to show them on my blog.
Comment by SubtleKnife — January 17, 2008 @
Why is the USA on there? It doesn’t have any official languages. They once proposed making English official, but the bill kinda died.
Comment by Clay — January 19, 2008 @
on the “biolinguistic” diversity of papua new guinea, a book titled “Vanishing Voices: the extinction of the world’s languages” by Daniel Nettle, might interest you. it goes into interesting detail about the language communities found on that island.
Comment by Kato — January 24, 2008 @
[...] it on the Strange Maps blog, and I was hooked immediately. Recent entries contain gems such as Papua New Guinea as linguistic superpower, a caricature of Europe in 1870, and a Blonde map of [...]
Pingback by Strange Maps - Another fascinating website « Sunny spells and scattered showers — January 26, 2008 @
Papua-New Guinea consists of high, sharp ridges creating canyons that reach to the sea. The villages in these canyons are very isolated so that multiple languages have had much time to develop.
Comment by Quatrain Gleam — January 30, 2008 @
[...] 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 [...]
Pingback by concretefields » Blog Archive » here’s something linguists do… — February 2, 2008 @
[...] 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 [...]
Pingback by fourth edition » Mapping the World — February 6, 2008 @
hi
Comment by Amber — February 8, 2008 @
[...] 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 [...]
Pingback by Trampa 22 :: ¿Quiere Europa ser Papúa Nueva Guinea? :: February :: 2008 — February 8, 2008 @
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.
Comment by sandy — February 21, 2008 @
[...] http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2008/01/02/230-papua-new-guinea-the-linguistic-superpower/ [...]
Pingback by International Mother Language Day « Everyday’s a Holiday — February 23, 2008 @
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]
Comment by Bellie Jayaprakash — February 26, 2008 @
[...] 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 [...]
Pingback by Roasting and Arrivals « Coffee Blog — March 12, 2008 @
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.
Comment by Simon Pepin Lehalleur — March 14, 2008 @
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.
Comment by Strummer — June 15, 2008 @