"Speaking in tongues: Language diversity around the world"

[steorra]

From The Economist: Daily chart: Speaking in tongues: Language diversity around the world

Briefly explains an interesting quantification of a country's linguistic diversity, based on the probability of two people chosen at random from that country having the same native language. (If two people chosen at random had 100% chance of having the same native language (i.e., everyone has the same native language), the score would be 0 (North Korea apparently fits here); if two people chosen at random had no chance of having the same language (i.e. no two people share the same native language), the score would be 1 (not actually possible in practice, but Papua New Guinea comes rather close).)

It doesn't explain the scoring in enough detail for me to tell it's as simple as that a score of 0.9 means two people chosen at random would have a 90% chance of having different languages, or if there's a bit more involved in creating the score.

It's also not clear to me if it accounts for people having multiple native languages

Comments

[lilacsigil]

"Mother tongue" is complicated somewhere like Vanuatu, as well - you're expected to speak the languages of your mother, father and spouse, be educated in English or French (depending where you live) and use a creole for communication with people who don't speak any of your languages. Which is the "mother tongue", and does that mean more or less language diversity by this chart?

[steorra]

Good question.
My understanding of native language includes that for something to be someone native language, it should be acquired fluently in childhood directly through contact with speakers of the language, not academically. I think this understanding is fairly standard.

Based on that, I'd guess that in the scenario you describe, your mother's language and your father's language and maybe the creole would be native languages, but English or French would not count (because they'd be learned academically through education, not directly through contact with speakers), and spouse's language would not count (because it'd be learned later in life, since you wouldn't know who your spouse is in childhood, unless in that culture you get married or betrothed at a young age.)

I'm not sure what age cutoff would best be put on childhood, though.

I also don't know how having three native languages (if we count mother's language, father's language, and creole) would be counted by this measure of language diversity.