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How many languages are spoken in the Pacific Islands?

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Despite containing not much more than 0.1 percent of the world's population, it is the most linguistically complex area of the world, with a quarter of the world's languages. When dealing with "true" Pacific languages, there are almost fourteen hundred distinct languages spoken in the region. read more

I do not think there is a good answer to this because “Pacific Islands” itself is a vague potentially ambiguous term. There are at least 2,000 I would say though. Many islands, like Hawaii, have closely related languages called “dialects” which are often not very intelligible. read more

For example, in Melanesia roughly one language is spoken for every 1,500 people. Malay, on the other hand, is spoken by 250 million people, making it the 8th most spoken language in the world. The languages of island nations in Polynesia and Micronesia are very similar in phonetics and meaning. read more

Austronesian with about 1000 languages, spoken throughout Maritime Southeast Asia and the islands of the Pacific Ocean, are considered much younger, with their origins in Taiwan and the south coast of mainland China, about 6,000 years ago. read more

There are two major language groups in the Pacific islands, Papuan with about 750 languages, spoken on some of the East Indonesian islands, Papua New Guinea, and the Solomon Islands. Papuan languages are considered to be quite ancient between 20- and 50,000 years. read more

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