How many languages are currently spoken in your country?

[kilat]

I still spend most of my time in Indonesia (moved here over 20 years ago), and I speak standard Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia) but none of the thousands of other languages that are spoken around this huge country. The remote islands in the East of the country seem to have the highest number of languages (in absolute terms as well as in proportion to population numbers), while the densely populated island of Java, which contains two thirds of the population, has relatively few (probably a few hundred, though). In many cases these 'languages' could be called dialects as they are more like local variants of the regional language.

Papua (the Indonesian-administered, Western half of New Guinea) is home to thousands of languages, and in many cases these really are separate languages as the inhabitants of the countless deep valleys in the jungles had little to no contact with other people for centuries, and developed their own languages that can be incomprehensible to people from the next valley.

You can actually get around the entire country with standard Indonesian as it's still the language of instruction in schools, and the language of most newspapers, TV broadcasts, official documents, etc, and most people speak it in addition to their own regional or local language or dialect.

[jdent5936]

I live in Taiwan. Taiwanese, Hakka, and Chinese are all widely-spoken. I was quite surprised to know that some of the older generation Taiwanese never learned any Chinese Mandarin at all. I have had a few incidents where I was speaking Chinese and they couldn't understand me. It was so confusing. I didn't learn until later that it was because they only spoke Taiwanese.

[xbrix]

I live in the United States, so there are tons of languages spoken in my country. People move in from other countries, and people also learn other languages.

[linguaholic]

I am living in Switzerland and we have 4 official languages here: German, French, Italian and a special variant of Romanian. English is not an official language here, however most of the people are able to speak in English as well (English is compulsory in school all over Switzerland).

[caparica007]

It's spoken in Miranda do Douro, Vimioso and Mogadouro. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirandese_language

Those islanders have really characteristic accents but they are still Portuguese 

Ahah, so it's actually spoken by approximately 8000 people? I think that can hardly be considered a language no, it's more like a dialect.

[Kotro]

Ahah, so it's actually spoken by approximately 8000 people? I think that can hardly be considered a language no, it's more like a dialect.

It doesn't matter if it's 8000 or 8 - it's not the amount of speakers that determine a language, but rather the diference between systems of communication. Mirandese could not be considered a dialect of Portuguese because it has no relation to it, they are different language families altogether and not mutually inteligible as are dialects.

[fredkawig]

We have about 10 or more, I'm not really sure how many languages we speak here in the Philippines. And with those languages we have different dialects for each one. For example, Ilocano which is a language for those in the Cordillera region and also for the Lowlands or Ilocos region. So we have about 5 different dialects of the Ilocano language. The Philippines being a mixture of heritage and cultures is a very unique country which have many Languages to offer.

[PSLoveCharli]

For Americans, I think the top 3 languages spoken here are English, Spanish, and French. Those are the languages most schools offer or require you to learn during grade school. I always say this, but if I could go back, I would have definitely taken learning another language seriously. Now I'm playing catch up.