‘Vanuatu is the third most linguistically diverse country in the world’

‘Vanuatu is the third most linguistically diverse country in the world’, is an article by Anouschka Folz, published by Island Life magazine on January 2, 2018.

The piece was originally published as ‘When languages die, we lose a part of who we are’ in The Conversation, on December 9, 2017.

Some linguists put the number of languages in the world as 6,000, others say 7000, but Kirk Huffman, former Curator of the Vanuatu Cultural Centre, points out that “it just depends on what one defines as a ‘language’ [rather than a ‘dialect’, etc].” The author here uses the Greenberg Index to determine that Vanuatu is the world’s 3rd most linguistically diverse country.

“However, if one takes just a normal thing like population, Vanuatu’s very small population and its very high number of languages [now thought to be over 110] actually probably make it the world’s ‘1st’ most linguistically diverse nation,” he notes.

In the article discussing the impact of climate change, Anouschka Folz writes that climate change and its increase in its related natural disasters may affect linguistic diversity.

“The areas affected by climate-related disasters are often ones that exhibit great linguistic diversity and include languages with small numbers of speakers, which are especially vulnerable. The threat facing islanders in Vanuatu is not just due to rising sea levels,” part of the article reads.

“Recent tectonic movements have also caused parts of some islands to sink. As a result, a whole coastal village had to be relocated further inland from 2002 to 2004.

“This prompted a 2005 United Nations Environment Programme to call these villagers the world’s first climate change refugees. These climate change refugees happen to be living in a country that has one of the highest levels of linguistic diversity in the world.

“Vanuatu is the third most linguistically diverse country in the world, as measured by the Greenberg index. The index shows the likelihood that two randomly selected speakers in a country have different native languages. Vanuatu’s Greenberg index is a staggering 97.3%.

“Vanuatu has 110 indigenous languages spoken in an area of about 15,000 square kilometres (about 6,000 square miles) – that’s about one language for every 136 square kilometres. Half of the languages spoken on Vanuatu have 700 speakers or less,” the article published by Island Life reads

Island Life is the Pacific’s general interest magazine bringing to its readers the latest news and features on travel, climate, environment and more.