Seven thousand or more different languages may currently be spoken around the world (Grimes 1988; Ruhlen 1991). This is more different languages spoken by a single mammalian species than there are mammalian species. Seven thousand different languages translate into up to seven thousand different ways of saying ‘Good morning’ or seven thousand different ways of saying ‘It looks like it's going to rain’. Contrast humans' remarkable capacity for language with that of the chimpanzee, a species often touted as able to learn language. Only after years of almost continual Skinnerian training (harassment?) do chimpanzees show a limited facility with sign language word use, and even then, little or no concept of grammar. Humans, on the other hand, effortlessly acquire language, use grammar in inventive ways and require no prodding or incentives. New and fully fledged sign languages have been observed to emerge spontaneously among groups of deaf children (Kegl and Lopez 1990). Language use and linguistic diversity distinguish our species, which might more aptly be called Homo sapiens loquens.

Language diversity is not evenly distributed around the world. As many as 700 to 1,000 different languages, or approximately 10 to 15% of the total, are found on the island of New Guinea (Moseley and Asher 1994), which at a relatively small 310,000 square miles deserves the moniker of the World's Tower of Babel. In regions of northeast Papua New Guinean coastal rain forest one encounters a new language every few miles, or less.