HOW LINGUISTICALLY DIVERSE IS YOUR COUNTRY? The Washington Post created this excellent visualization of what is known as the Greenberg diversity index, which determines a country’s linguistic diversity. The way it works is this: what is the probability that two randomly selected people from a country will speak the same native language? If every person in the country speaks a different language, the number assigned will be 100. If everyone speaks the same language, the number is 0.
Papua New Guinea comes shockingly close to 100: they manage a 98.8. The US ranks relatively low on the index, with a ranking of about 33. See how we compare to the rest of the world. 