Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea has around 840 living languages, more than any other country, spoken by fewer than ten million people.

Context

Papua New Guinea is often described as the most linguistically diverse country on Earth. Ethnologue lists roughly 840 living languages there, spread across a rugged landscape of mountains, river valleys and islands where small communities historically had little contact with each other.

Many of these languages belong to families classed as Papuan, a grouping of languages that are not all closely related, while others are Austronesian languages brought by seafaring peoples. Several have only a few thousand speakers, and some have far fewer.

For everyday communication across groups, people rely on a few widely shared languages. Tok Pisin, an English-based creole, and English and Hiri Motu are official languages of the country. The number 840 is an estimate, since decisions about what counts as a separate language rather than a dialect affect the total.

Documenting these languages is an ongoing task for linguists and local communities, and many have only been recorded in the last century. Population growth, migration to towns and the use of Tok Pisin and English in schools are factors that affect how many of them survive.