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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I feel like you’re underestimating the linguistic diversity of the Americas. All the European languages fall into one of five language families (Indo-European, Uralic, Turkic, Basque, and Afro-Asiatic). My state of Oregon, which is slightly larger than the UK, is thought to have hosted as many as twelve language families before colonizers wiped many of them out.
Today, the main languages of the Americas are Spanish, English, and Fr*nch, and that’s because the Americas were colonized largely by people from… Spain, England, and Fr*nce. I know the Dutch tried to get some skin in the game early on but they got BTFO and had to sell everything to the British.
I feel like this post is disingenuous. If you know there are hundreds of indigenous languages…there you go. Thats your answer.
> Edit 1: yeah I know América has a lot of different indigenous languages and dialects, also Europe. I’m focusing on the principal languages
By “principal languages”, you mean “languages that the English, French, Dutch and Spanish colonizers brought to America”, and not “the languages that people who have lived in America for thousands of years speak”
I think phrasing the question like that also answers your question.
American has _plenty_ of languages, it’s just that they’re spoken by the indigenous people (just like there are many indigenous European languages), and so many Americans don’t consider them “real” languages”.
If you only consider people descended from Europeans to be “proper” people, and languages spoken by European colonizers to be “proper” languages, then you’re going to find more languages in Europe than in any other part of the world. Not because there’s anything special about Europe or European languages, but because you’ve decided up front that only European languages count.
Because there wasn’t a force that went into Europe, killed almost everyone, and forced the remainder to speak English.
If Germany won WW2, then there will be a hell lot less “official” language in Europe.
There are hundreds of languages in the US alone, and many many hundreds in all of the americas. The US is among the most linguistically diverse.
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