Language and Geography

Being from Barcelona, Spain and currently living in the US, not too many people know that the language I speak to my children is not Spanish, but Catalan, a co-official language in Spain, together with Euskera and Galician and, a number of seriously endangered and recognized minority languages.

Spain is just an example of how culturally and linguistically diverse some places in the world are compared to others. The question is, WHY do some places in the world have lots of small languages, and others have fewer, bigger languages?

Cultures and societies both developed out of their landscape, but also shaped them too. In this article, explains how the landscape can predict language diversity all around the world and how latest studies have narrowed down the key factors.