Among the facts in the new edition of Ethnologue, a sprawling compendium of the world’s languages, are that 119 of them are sign languages for the deaf and that 497 are nearly extinct. Only one artificial language has native speakers. (Yes, it’s Esperanto.) Most languages have fewer than a million speakers, and the most linguistically diverse nation on the planet is Papua New Guinea. The least diverse? North Korea.

Opening the 1,200-page book at random, one can read about Garo, spoken by 102,000 people in Bangladesh and 575,000 in India, which is written with the Roman alphabet, or about Bernde, spoken by 2,000 people in Chad. Ethnologue, which began as a 40-language guide for Christian missionaries in 1951, has grown so comprehensive it is a source for academics and governments, and the occasional game show.

Classification: Sino-Tibetan, Chinese

Language use: Speakers of other languages use this for commerce. Most domains. All ages. Shantou and Chenhai varieties of the Chao-shan dialect are considered to be cultured. Chao-shan speakers may speak Mandarin, Cantonese, or English for buying and selling, Mandarin to outside Chinese and government purposes, English to foreigners. Those under 30 are more bilingual.

Language development: Literacy rate in first language: 30% literate in Chao-shan. Many older people cannot read Chinese, but all young people can read standard Mandarin Chinese. Roman script in Taiwan. Poetry. Dictionary. Grammar. Bible: 1884–1933.