Countries that Speak the Most Languages in the World – Where Does Albania Rank?

In most countries around the world, one or two dominant languages are spoken. But imagine a country where only 13% of the people live in cities – and the rest live in remote rural areas, sometimes on small, far-off islands or in tribal villages.

In these countries, there is not just one or two languages, but 840 languages that thrive and are used. One of these countries is Papua New Guinea, and it is the most linguistically diverse country on the planet. The data presented in the table below comes from Ethnologue 2024:

Papua New Guinea has 840 languages still spoken, the vast majority of which are indigenous and spoken in small areas of the country. A form of English pidgin (Tok Pisin) is the lingua franca with over 4 million speakers. It is estimated that there are around 23 languages in the country with more than 20,000 native speakers. The rest is a very long list spoken by increasingly smaller communities and groups. Indonesia shares the same landmass as Papua New Guinea (the island of New Guinea), so it is not surprising that it comes next in the ranking, with 710 languages still spoken across the archipelago. However, a key difference is the population – Indonesia has nearly 30 times more people, making it less linguistically dense per capita.

To see how many languages are spoken in Albania, the following map shows that ten languages are spoken:

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