Re: Linguistic superpowers or...
- From: "benlizro@xxxxxxxxxx" <benlizro@xxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 11:47:30 -0800 (PST)
On Feb 1, 5:27 am, "jimbo.ty...@xxxxxxxxx" <jimbo.ty...@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
I found this link
http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2008/01/02/230-papua-new-guinea-the-...
on nakedtranslations (a translator's blog). For people who don't
follow links it's a map purportedly showing countries ranked by
linguistic diversity. Here are the results for the top 12. I'm not
convinced by any of these numbers but the one that puzzles me is
Nigeria. Is there any evidence that Nigeria is more linguistically
diverse than its neighbours?
It's much bigger than its neighbours (more people), and it is
linguistically diverse, so it shouldn't be surprising that its
language total is large.
If you want more convincing, as Peter says, you can find these figures
(or very close to them) on Ethnologue, with full lists of the
languages, and maps. Ethnologue tends towards the "splitter" side. A
determined "lumper" might deflate their figures by 10 or even 20
percent, but I doubt more than that.
Ross Clark
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
.
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- From: jimbo.tyson@xxxxxxxxx
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