Indonesia Ranks Second Globally with 709 Living Languages

Indonesia has been ranked as the country with the second highest number of living languages in the world, according to data from the Summer Institute of Linguistics International processed by Our World in Data. The archipelago boasts 709 languages that are still actively spoken, placing it just behind Papua New Guinea, which leads the list with 843 languages.

The data underscores how geographical conditions, history, migration, and the level of isolation of a country play a significant role in shaping linguistic diversity. Despite having a population of less than 12 million, Papua New Guinea retains hundreds of languages thanks to its mountainous terrain, numerous islands, and communities that have historically lived separated from one another. This number is almost double that of India, a country with a much larger population.

At the other end of the spectrum, North Korea ranks at the bottom with only two living languages: Korean and Korean Sign Language. This limited diversity is closely linked to the country’s extreme political isolation following the division of the Korean Peninsula after World War II. A similar pattern is observed in Cuba and the Dominican Republic, where the dominance of Spanish since the colonial era has led to the gradual disappearance of indigenous languages, with African linguistic influences eventually merging into the Spanish spoken there. The data reveals that while only 20 countries globally have 100 or more living languages, many nations that now have very few languages once possessed far greater linguistic diversity that was eroded by colonisation, cultural assimilation, and the extinction of native tongues.