Which country contains the most languages?
Papua New Guinea has more languages than any other country, with over 820 indigenous languages, representing 12% of the world's total, but most have fewer than 1,000 speakers. The most widely spoken indigenous language is Enga, with about 200,000 speakers, followed by Melpa and Huli. Indigenous languages are classified into two large groups, Austronesian languages and non-Austronesian, or Papuan, languages. There are four official languages in Papua New Guinea: English, sign language (which in practice means Papua New Guinean Sign Language), Tok Pisin and Hiri Motu.
English is the language of government and the education system, but it is not spoken widely.
More Info:
en.wikipedia.org
What are your thoughts on this subject?
6 Comments
Pat Salloum
Countries don't contain languages; the people of countries speak languages! Strange wording!!
australianworsfold
Hmmmm, me thinks you should re-visit this one, I am certain the Australian indigenous communities will tell you they had thousands of languages over this vast land. Just sayin'
John W Shreve
I must have learned this on another trivia site. Hooray!
Micheline Ratcliffe
the question was: which country has the most languages ? (out of the 4 below suggestions) and PNG was the correct answer ... not China, Australian indigenous, Indian or anything else.
Colleen Callaghan Mitrow
Have all the Indigenous languages of Aus been recognized??
I still think its Aus!!
Johnny Rock
I got this right but, how could you not choose China would have more languages than Papua New Guinea? Most instances (but not this time) with China in the answers I will always go with China. Like presidents, I will go with Theodore Roosevelt.