http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2012/02/daily-chart-9

Kind of interesting (least to me)

How is south africa more diverse than Nigeria. They must have languages that are spoken by not more than then people then.

What does "relative poverty" have to do with keeping a single language from dominating a country? I understand linguistic rivalry and geography can be a factor, but poverty should not matter.

I must be missing something.

EzeUche. How far? I hope all is well.

EzeUche:

What does "relative poverty" have to do with keeping a single language from dominating a country? I under linguistic rivalry and geography can be a factor, but poverty should not matter.

I must be missing something.

I'm not sure I understand their point very well but I can guess based on my own long term assumptions about language, culture and development.

A quick look at the G8 Countries show they basically have one central dominating language. France, Germany, US, Japan, China, UK, Russia, Italy all have this in common.

Now that does not mean they don't have other languages within their borders, but the undeniably dominant language is a single one. I'm sure there are outliers here and there, but this G8 example is powerful.

Diversity is Great, but lack of cohesion is a big problem, a common language aids understanding.

A shame none of the languages are properly regulated.

It will be nice to make sure every nigerian could speak at least 2. That will reduce the ethnic tension in the country. Caused by misunderstanding

@kilode
Erm china has more than 1 dominant language, mandarin and Cantonese.

Nice

EzeUche:

What does "relative poverty" have to do with keeping a single language from dominating a country? I under linguistic rivalry and geography can be a factor, but poverty should not matter.

I must be missing something.

kilode has offered some interesting explanations for one particular language dominating others, which i agree with

Kilode?!:

Diversity is Great, but lack of cohesion is a big problem, a common language aids understanding.

it all boils down to commerce & economics, the need to win\survive in a market competition. if you want to expand your trade into another community, then you'd need to learn the language of that community, either it's native tongue or it's adopted tongue like english, french, spanish etc. because we all have a continuous need to survive, we attain survival by trade, trading by communication & communication by a common language, so the less commercially valuable languages will become extinct with time. so over the generations, many people who now see english, french, spanish as their mother tongue will not qualify for the same if you were to judge by the language of their ancestory which are lost to them.

EzeUche:

What does "relative poverty" have to do with keeping a single language from dominating a country? I under linguistic rivalry and geography can be a factor, but poverty should not matter.

well, it's like this: when wealth & development is associated with a particular ethnic group or language as against the others, you'd see that the rest of society will tend to adopt the values, cultures & methods of that advanced group in order to gain the same advantages. so we have a high diversity index because we are all generally poor & underdeveloped & therefore content in our own small groups. it is also evident that "everybody" is looking for opportunities to emigrate to america & europe because we see them as the advanced societies. so, for them that succeed in emigrating & settling in those places, thus starts the process of their languages & cultures being lost to the future generations. you don't even need to travel out in order to assimilate western cultures as they are being exported to us directly.

tayoccu:

@kilode
Erm china has more than 1 dominant language, mandarin and Cantonese.

Well, I'm not an expert on Chinese language but my understanding is that both languages are very similar, right?

Like Yoruba and Ekiti language, or Ijebu and Standard Yoruba or maybe Pidgin and proper English.

If that is so, Then it's enough to say they have one dominant language, people can easily understand each other.

Cantonese and Mandarin are not mutually intelligible, iirc.

Yoruba dialects largely are.

^

But the differences can't be compared to say Hausa vs Yoruba or fulfulde vs Igbo right?

Another point is the cultural relevance of these Dominant languages, I did not see that point in the economist article. I believe that counts too. Hard to develop when the official language is alien, imported and very foreign I.e English.

I wish they explored that point also.

SA more linguistically diverse than Nigeria? Interesting . . .

crazy schedule from a crazy blog.
the arrangement is laughable, Nigeria if 3rd with 514 diverse languages after indonisia with 719

why did they choose to arrange the table like that and some prople didnt even look at it well

i think the missing link here could be population

the larger the population, the higher the possibility of two people meeting randomly and having the same mother tongue and that is more pronounced where tribes tend to stay together for safety due to spontaneous tribal clashes that has now become very prevalent

the only places where you really have cosmopolitarianism in nigeria are lagos, port harcourt and a few other commercial cities all numbering less than 5.

This is really very interesting.I agree with okeyxyz.

A language becoming dominant is as a result of it being more favorable for the survival of more humans. We all remember at a point in history,Latin was the relevant language to learn simply because of the economic and political prowess of the Roman Empire.Same happened with Arabic language in the middle east. If in the future say Kanuri takes over as the world economic and political leadership, then the whole world will gradually tune to learning that language.

By the way, That list is incomplete. Ghana for example, is not on it. There are more than 150 countries in the world. So,you can't rank when some countries are missing from the list.

South africa is one of the most diverse countries in the world we have always known it most africans arent aware of this until they come down south we have large communities of east europeans asians including many indians Ghandi used to live in south africa at one point and then we can really boast of having alot of africans from west to east north and ofcourse south thats why we are called the rainbow nation our diverse population is due to many factors including our strategic position on this wounderfull continent. Please i invite you all to come and see.

Oh yeah what makes us linguistically diverse is that all our 11 official languages of south africa are different to a large degree and no one language or culture dominates the country.

Naledi14:

Oh yeah what makes us linguistically diverse is that all our 11 official languages of south africa are different to a large degree and no one language or culture dominates the country.

Yes, this is true. Thats y SA is ranked higher than Nigeria on the list.
I visited South Africa last year, and i must say i'm in love with the country. Yes it has its problems, but culture-wise, its a really beautiful country

Interesting!Linguistic diversity is natural,hence society must strive for cohension to overcome mutual misunderstanding.

Berlin Conference | causing different nations to mix | dividing existing nations | stymied development