I mean, for example south and Central America only have like 2 or 3 languages, and is like the same territory of Europe, but in Europe in a “small” area are more than 6 languages (Portuguese, Spanish, French, Dutch, Italian). Focus more in explaining why in Europe are so many languages in such a “small” territory?
Edit 1: yeah I know América has a lot of different indigenous languages and dialects, also Europe. I’m focusing on the principal languages
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There were a lot of different languages in Americas that just as European languages all were derived by gradual cultural shifts from a common protolanguage, but most of those were the native tongues of local tribes that were expunged by European invadions. After Europeans discovered America a process called colonization happen – lands that those natives lived on were seen as “no one’s territory” by the European powers like Portugal, Castile(modern Spain) or France, so they decided to take them by force creating colonial nations that used their mother tongues. As such, the local population was either killed out to make place for the settlers from European mainland, or forced into a cultural conversion in order to end up as a free labor force, witch resulted in a abandonment of the native languages, and without anyone speaking those languages they become lost to time. On the other hand European countries never faced a crisis like that, and as such most of the “mother tongues” survived.
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