Languages of the world

There are currently about 7,000 different languages on the globe, from local dialects of English and Chinese to large language families such as Indo-European or Sino-Tibetan languages.

The distribution of languages around the globe is very uneven; this is clearly seen when one compares the vast Mandarin-speaking area in China with the most linguistically diverse region of New Guinea and its adjacent smaller islands, where a population of 5 million speak more than 1,000 different languages.