How many languages are spoken in the world?

Ethnologue, the leading catalogue of world languages, lists roughly 7,100 to 7,200 living languages. They are spread very unevenly: just 23 languages are spoken by more than half of the world’s population, while thousands have fewer than 1,000 speakers. Papua New Guinea is the most linguistically diverse country, with around 840 languages. Many small languages are disappearing as younger generations switch to national or global languages, and experts estimate one is lost roughly every few months. Counting languages is tricky because the line between a language and a dialect is often political as much as linguistic.