When people are asked how many languages they think there are in the world, the answers vary quite a bit.
Rather, the problem is that the very notion of enumerating languages is a lot more complicated than it might seem. There are a number of coherent (but quite different) answers that linguists might give to this apparently simple question. The reason for this lack is not (just) that parts of the world such as highland New Guinea or the forests of the Amazon have not been explored in enough detail to ascertain the range of people who live there. It turns out, however, that there is no such definite count-or at least, no such count that has any status as a scientific finding of modern linguistics. One might suppose, therefore, that linguists would have a clear and reasonably precise notion of how many languages there are in the world. The object of inquiry in linguistics is human language, in particular the extent and limits of diversity in the world’s languages. How many languages are there in the world? Stephen R.
