Papua New Guinea is roughly the size of California, but its people speak more than 840 different languages - about one out of every eight languages spoken anywhere on Earth. No other country comes close.
Why so many? The country is a maze of tall mountains, deep valleys, dense rainforests, and offshore islands. Communities were often cut off from their neighbours by terrain that was nearly impossible to cross. Over thousands of years, each isolated valley developed its own language.
Some of those languages are now spoken by only a handful of people. To communicate across all those communities, Papua New Guinea has three official languages including a creole called Tok Pisin, which mashes together English, German, and various local tongues.
