What nation has the most number of dialects?

Answer 1

The top four, according to the Ethnologue database --
1) Papua New Guinea - 830 languages listed (820 living, 10 extinct)
http://www.ethnologue.com/show_country.asp?name=PG

2) India - 428 languages listed (415 living, 13 extinct)
http://www.ethnologue.com/show_country.asp?name=IN

3) Mexico - 298 languages listed (291 living, 7 extinct)
http://www.ethnologue.com/show_country.asp?name=MX

4) China -- 236 languages listed (235 living, 1 extinct)
http://www.ethnologue.com/show_country.asp?name=China

Infoplease seems generally to concur, listing 715 indigineous languages for Papua New Guinea
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0107875.html
compare: http://geography.about.com/library/faq/blqzpapualanguages.htm


There is a bit of confusion, though, since Infoplease also speaks of India having "1,600+ dialects"
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0107629.html
Compare wikipedia's "number of mother tongues in India is as high as 1,652" (though there is no further explanation given)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_India

Based solely on this, one might argue for India. But the problem here is that "dialect" is used in many different ways, and the statistics given for India are not explained, nor are other countries compared on the same basis. Since Ethnologue, which is highly regarded, uses one consistent approach to all the countries, I believe it is wisest to go with their totals, according to which PAPUA NEW GUINEA ranks first.

Answer 2

I am a Chinese. All the while, I suppose it is the Chinese that have the most dialects.

After I studied about India and visited there last year, I think I am convinced that India may have more.

Perpahs it is because China has an official language of Pu Tong Hua, which was indroduced by Shi Huangdi (First Empror of Chin Dynasty), thus making concersation thru out China easier. But in India, in the north, people use Hindi, south, they use Tamil. Each area, there are different local languages.

Some of my Indian friends told me, almost every 20km, there is a new language.

Answer 3

definately not the united states. we don't have different dialects here. just bad english, worse english, ebonics, and spanglish.

i would pick any number of the countries in central america. spanish isn't the only language spoken there. many different types of indigenous languages are spoken there as well. in one country (i think it's guatemala or nicaragua) almost a third of the country doesn't speak spanish and speak over 12 different indigenous languages. the caribbean dialect of patwah (spelling?) is spoken there as well.

Answer 4

I think its china because of all the different dialects . B/c they do have 20% of the world's population.

Answer 5

I'm going to assume you mean LANGUAGES and not DIALECTS. They are different things entirely. Papua New Guinea has more languages than any other country in the world.

Answer 6

curiously Slovenia has seven diverse dialects of the Slovene language regardless of it being an extremely small u . s . of in user-friendly terms a million million inhabitants. even nonetheless, Papua New Guinea has over 3000 diverse languages - often times the languages spoken there variety thoroughly from one valley to a diverse.

Answer 7

india. it has over 80. china is close but only 30 or so dialects

Answer 8

What you're seeing is the age old curse of indirect translation. It is impossible to translate word-for-word from one language to another. You could be looking at any occupation from customs agent to receiving clerk. Just brainstorm as many jobs that entail receiving or accepting, and choose the most logical one.

Answer 9

philippines - in just one island there would 3 or more dialects and we have approximately 700 inhabited islands.

Answer 10

Since the US has so many immigrants and a native population that has numerous languages, I would say the US.