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Papua New Guinea, a sovereign state in Oceania, is the most linguistically diverse country in the world. [5] According to Ethnologue, there are 839 living languages spoken in the country. [6] In 2006, Papua New Guinea Prime Minister Sir Michael Somare stated that "Papua New Guinea has 832 living languages (languages, not dialects)." [7] [8]
Country or territory Number of living languages Number of speakers Established Immigrant Total Percent [note 1]Total Mean Median Papua New Guinea 840 0 840 11.81 ...
The languages that are neither Austronesian nor Australian are considered Papuan languages; this is a geographical rather than linguistic demarcation. [1] Of the Papuan languages, the largest linguistic grouping is considered to be Trans-New Guinean , with between 300 and 500 languages likely belonging to the group in addition to a huge variety ...
Papua New Guinea has more languages than any other country, [126] with over 820 indigenous languages, representing 12% of the world's total, but most have fewer than 1,000 speakers. With an average of only 7,000 speakers per language, Papua New Guinea has a greater density of languages than any other nation on earth except Vanuatu .
Principal language families of the world (and in some cases geographic groups of families). For greater detail, see Distribution of languages in the world. This is a list of languages by total number of speakers. It is difficult to define what constitutes a language as opposed to a dialect.
The "Papuan languages" are a strictly geographical grouping, and does not imply a genetic relationship. The concept of Papuan (non-Austronesian) speaking Melanesians as distinct from Austronesian-speaking Melanesians was first suggested and named by Sidney Herbert Ray in 1892. [2] In accordance with William A. Foley (1986):
Papuan-speaking peoples – Papuan peoples who speak the Papuan languages (the mutually unrelated, non-Austronesian language families), numbering about 7 million in population, and mostly reside on the island of New Guinea and a few of the smaller islands of Melanesia located off the northeast coast of New Guinea. [44]
They speak mainly Huli and Tok Pisin; many also speak some of the surrounding languages, and some also speak English. They are one of the largest cultural groups in Papua New Guinea, numbering over 250,000 people (based on the population of Hela of 249,449 at the time of the 2011 national census).