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A glib answer would be "because it's a huge continent"? In fairness, I think this is actually a pretty decent article about a complex topic, but I can't help bu

by Osmium 12y ago

A glib answer would be "because it's a huge continent"? In fairness, I think this is actually a pretty decent article about a complex topic, but I can't help but think it's the wrong question to ask.

bnejad 12y ago
How is it the wrong question to ask? What value judgement are you making? I'm curious because its hard to imagine any question being wrong(to ask) if its asked genuinely and without malice.
- Osmium 12y ago
  Sure, completely agreed. I didn't mean 'wrong' in terms of being ethically wrong. I think the article itself contains a more insightful question: "Is genetic diversity linked to linguistic diversity?"
  - frenchy 12y ago
    > I think the article itself contains a more insightful question: "Is genetic diversity linked to linguistic diversity?" Why is that an insightful question? I wouldn't have expected a strong correlation, and from the article, there doesn't appear to be one. At the risk of being too dismissive, I thought the reasons for linguistic diversity were already well known (that is, physical and political separation and a lack of trade/communication).
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
galago 12y ago
If one were to employ the same test/criteria, I wonder how many languages are spoken in North America? It also makes me wonder how many people in North America don't speak any significant amount of Spanish or English. There are some for various reasons, but not many. At the same time, the article refers to an SSIL document which lists USA as having 422 living languages--which would be 7th in the world for most active languages. However, in practice most public life is carried out in Spanish or English. Will the same phenomenon in store for Africa?
- indubitably 12y ago
  There are millions of people in the Americas that don't speak English or Spanish. (Even ignoring the 200 million speakers of Brazilian Portuguese.) If you combine just Mayan, Nahuatl, Mixtec, and Zapotec you're already in the millions.
kleer001 12y ago
"because it's a huge continent and humans have been there a very long time"
HillRat 12y ago
Also, while there are many languages in Africa, the number of coherent families isn't necessarily that large. For example, Bambara is part of a larger family of languages that are more like highly-divergent dialects (or so I'm given to understand -- I was lucky to communicate at all in my broken Bambara and pidgin French). By the same token, Arabic has a multitude of spoken dialects that are barely intelligible to each other. I also think that the question suffers by failing to compare the range of languages found in other regions. The geographic distribution of the Indo-European language facility is comparable to Africa and contains around 500 known languages, though it is likely that at least as many were extinguished through various means (peaceful and not) over the centuries. Linguistic diversity is the norm, not the exception, though large-scale political consolidation tends to mask this.
- panglott 12y ago
  I get your point, but even still. The Niger-Congo family is probably relatively analogous to the Indo-European family (both in internal diversity, geographic spread, and association with the spread of pastoralism/agriculture), but even still you've got the very convoluted Afro-Asiatic family, Khoi-San languages, numerous language isolates, &c. &c. But in Europe you only have the Indo-European family and Basque.

by Osmium 12y ago

A glib answer would be "because it's a huge continent"? In fairness, I think this is actually a pretty decent article about a complex topic, but I can't help but think it's the wrong question to ask.

bnejad 12y ago

How is it the wrong question to ask? What value judgement are you making? I'm curious because its hard to imagine any question being wrong(to ask) if its asked genuinely and without malice.

Osmium 12y ago
Sure, completely agreed. I didn't mean 'wrong' in terms of being ethically wrong. I think the article itself contains a more insightful question: "Is genetic diversity linked to linguistic diversity?"
- frenchy 12y ago
  > I think the article itself contains a more insightful question: "Is genetic diversity linked to linguistic diversity?" Why is that an insightful question? I wouldn't have expected a strong correlation, and from the article, there doesn't appear to be one. At the risk of being too dismissive, I thought the reasons for linguistic diversity were already well known (that is, physical and political separation and a lack of trade/communication).
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]

galago 12y ago

If one were to employ the same test/criteria, I wonder how many languages are spoken in North America? It also makes me wonder how many people in North America don't speak any significant amount of Spanish or English. There are some for various reasons, but not many. At the same time, the article refers to an SSIL document which lists USA as having 422 living languages--which would be 7th in the world for most active languages. However, in practice most public life is carried out in Spanish or English. Will the same phenomenon in store for Africa?

indubitably 12y ago
There are millions of people in the Americas that don't speak English or Spanish. (Even ignoring the 200 million speakers of Brazilian Portuguese.) If you combine just Mayan, Nahuatl, Mixtec, and Zapotec you're already in the millions.

kleer001 12y ago

"because it's a huge continent and humans have been there a very long time"

HillRat 12y ago

Also, while there are many languages in Africa, the number of coherent families isn't necessarily that large. For example, Bambara is part of a larger family of languages that are more like highly-divergent dialects (or so I'm given to understand -- I was lucky to communicate at all in my broken Bambara and pidgin French). By the same token, Arabic has a multitude of spoken dialects that are barely intelligible to each other. I also think that the question suffers by failing to compare the range of languages found in other regions. The geographic distribution of the Indo-European language facility is comparable to Africa and contains around 500 known languages, though it is likely that at least as many were extinguished through various means (peaceful and not) over the centuries. Linguistic diversity is the norm, not the exception, though large-scale political consolidation tends to mask this.

panglott 12y ago
I get your point, but even still. The Niger-Congo family is probably relatively analogous to the Indo-European family (both in internal diversity, geographic spread, and association with the spread of pastoralism/agriculture), but even still you've got the very convoluted Afro-Asiatic family, Khoi-San languages, numerous language isolates, &c. &c. But in Europe you only have the Indo-European family and Basque.