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English may be the lingua franca these days but there are still about 1600 other languages out there. We may not always be able to answer questions about any language but, if the Alpha Agora grows as we hope it will, we will have others who can respond.

Anyway, bring your questions of languages other than English here, and we will do our best to answer them for you.

In 1929, the Frech Academy announced that the number of languages in the world was exactly 2796. Disregarding the difficult question of what is a language, I'd say that the general opinion is that there are some 4500 languages or more around, perhaps as many as 6000-6500.

There will never be a consensus, but one opinion, often quoted, is that there are some 750 languages in Papua New Guinea alone.

For a person at all interested in languages, Erik V. Gunnemark: Countries, Peoples and their Languages: The Geolinguistic Handbook is a must. (No, I don't get a commission.) It's ISBN 91-630-1321-5.