how people think numbers in different languages

The studies also ran up against many methodological challenges, the biggest of which centered on the old statistical adage-correlation does not equal causation. The results varied a lot from one study to another, and no clear patterns emerged. These prior efforts all examined the degree to which different environmental, social and geographic variables correlated with the number of languages found in a given location. But, starting in 2010, when our diverse team of researchers from six different disciplines and eight different countries began to review what was known, we were shocked that only a dozen previous studies had been done, including one we ourselves completed on language diversity in the Pacific. The questions also seem like they should be fundamental to many academic disciplines-linguistics, anthropology, human geography. They hypothesize that language diversity must be about history, cultural differences, mountains or oceans dividing populations, or old squabbles writ large-'we hated them, so we don't talk to them.' Most people can easily brainstorm possible answers to these intriguing questions.

Why is it that humans speak so many languages? And why are they so unevenly spread across the planet? As it turns out, we have few clear answers to these fundamental questions about how humanity communicates. For example, the 250,000 people who live on Vanuatu's 80 islands speak 110 different languages, but in Bangladesh, a population 600 times greater speaks only 41 languages. Even within the tropics, language diversity varies widely. Russia, 20 times larger, has 105 indigenous languages. The tropical island of New Guinea is home to over 900 languages. For example, far more languages are found in tropical regions than in the temperate zones. Instead, today our species collectively speaks over 7,000 distinct languages.Īnd these languages are not spread randomly across the planet. People don't speak one universal language, or even a handful. We could ask this same question of the entire globe. According to recent work by my colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, this island, just 100 kilometers long and 20 kilometers wide, is home to speakers of perhaps 40 different indigenous languages. Yet the residents of each village spoke completely different languages. In many cases, you could stand at the edge of one village and see the outskirts of the next community. They lived in 16 different communities and spoke 16 distinct languages. Thirty people had gathered for the workshop on this island in the South Pacific, and all except for me came from the island, called Makelua, in the nation of Vanuatu. I was amazed by the ease with which the meeting's participants switched between languages, but I was even more astonished by the number of different indigenous languages. Each time, I noticed that the language of the conversation would change from an indigenous language to something they knew I could understand, Bislama or English. I wandered from group to group, joining in the discussions. As everyone at the research workshop headed outside for a break, small groups splintered off to gather in the shade of coconut trees and enjoy a breeze. The thatched roof held back the sun's rays, but it could not keep the tropical heat at bay. This article was originally published on The Conversation.

How people think numbers in different languages