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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]
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 .
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 ...
The West Papuan languages are a proposed language family of about two dozen non-Austronesian languages of the Bird's Head Peninsula (Vogelkop or Doberai Peninsula) of far western New Guinea, the island of Halmahera and its vicinity, spoken by about 220,000 people in all.
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):
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 indigenous peoples of Western New Guinea in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, commonly called Papuans, [1] are Melanesians.There is genetic evidence for two major historical lineages in New Guinea and neighboring islands: a first wave from the Malay Archipelago perhaps 50,000 years ago when New Guinea and Australia were a single landmass called Sahul and, much later, a wave of Austronesian ...
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]