#30: LOL: Lots of Languages
The world has a lot more languages than most people realize. People tend to think of just the major ones when they consider the world’s languages, but there are, in fact, thousands of them out there. Many of them, however, are spoken by only a small number of people in an isolated area.
To see the truth of this, you only have to look at Papua New Guinea, an island nation north of Australia. Because of the rugged terrain of the island, many of the populations who live there are isolated from each other, causing their languages to diverge and evolve and eventually become entirely different languages. 820 languages is pretty impressive for a place with a population of 9 million.