Questions and answers

ALPS stands for Average Languages a Person Speaks. It is a population-weighted average: the number of languages each person speaks, averaged across a population. The current global estimate is 1.59, built from 235 countries and territories covering some 97% of humanity.

Unlike most instruments, ALPS counts an unlimited number of languages per person rather than stopping at a first and second language or capping the count at three or four.

Conversational competence at CEFR A2 and above — the Common European Framework of Reference level at which a person can handle routine everyday exchanges. That threshold is deliberately stricter than "knows some words" and deliberately looser than "native-level mastery".

Fixing it is what makes the whole exercise possible. Because the censuses and surveys we draw on apply different and often unstated thresholds, a substantial part of the methodology consists of harmonizing them to this single standard, with each adjustment documented rather than assumed.

Country by country, from that country's best available evidence — censuses, large survey programmes, national statistical offices, documented language surveys — each source harmonized to the CEFR A2+ threshold and to common counting rules, then audited against independent evidence. Where sources conflict, the conflict is reported and the likely direction of the remaining error is stated.

The connectivity index adds a further layer: partial comprehension between related languages, handled through a documented mutual intelligibility matrix rather than treating every language as an isolated box.

The full methodology will be published together with the first paper, including the assumption register, the sensitivity of headline figures to alternative conventions, and the datasets needed to reproduce every number. Until then, the outline of the approach is on the Research and Data pages; specific questions are welcome at research@lingacon.com.

Mostly because published numbers rarely measure the same thing. A person counted as bilingual under one survey's threshold fails to qualify under another's; some sources count languages "known", others languages used at home, others only a mother tongue plus one foreign language.

Our methodology differs from these in three specific ways. We fix a single proficiency threshold (CEFR A2+) and harmonize every source to it. We count an unlimited number of languages per person, where most instruments truncate at two to four. And we audit each national figure against independent evidence instead of adopting one source wholesale.

The result is internally comparable across all 235 jurisdictions — and therefore sometimes different from figures produced under other definitions. Where our number departs from a familiar one, the reason is documented, and readers are free to disagree with the convention once they can see it.

It is the probability that two people, drawn at random, can understand each other. Aggregated over all pairs it becomes an index of how connected a population is — the Global Linguistic Connectivity Index.

The global value is 11.6%. Within a single country it rises to roughly 57%; between two different countries it falls to 8.3%, meaning more than nine of every ten cross-border pairs of human beings share no language at all.

One precision worth keeping: the index measures comprehension — whether one person can understand the other — rather than a fully symmetric conversation. Comprehension is often asymmetric in reality, and the index is built to reflect that.

Yes, and it matters a great deal. A Spanish speaker follows a good deal of Portuguese; a Czech speaker understands much of Slovak; between neighbouring Arabic varieties comprehension varies sharply depending on which varieties are involved.

LINGACON handles this with a mutual intelligibility coefficient — a documented matrix of partial comprehension between related languages, drawn from the experimental literature rather than assumed. The matrix is asymmetric, because comprehension frequently is: speakers of one variety often understand another better than the reverse.

Because a global average should represent the globe. The dataset covers every jurisdiction with a resident population, including dependent territories — not only UN member states — together accounting for more than 8 billion people, roughly 97% of humanity.

It means the average person on Earth speaks between one and two languages, closer to one and a half. Behind that average lies enormous variation: some societies are overwhelmingly monolingual, while in others three or four languages per person is unremarkable.

The more surprising finding is that the average is a poor predictor of connectivity. Which languages people learn turns out to matter far more than how many — a country can be highly multilingual and barely connected to anyone outside it.

Yes — the headline datasets are openly available for academic and scientific research, free of charge, with citation required. They are published alongside each paper together with the materials needed to reproduce every figure.

Use outside academic research — commercial analysis, product work, licensed reporting — falls under our proprietary data terms; see Partnerships. For early access, additional country detail, or replication materials, write to research@lingacon.com.

LINGACON is independent and receives no external funding. You can support it financially, sponsor one of the planned studies, collaborate on data collection, or help connect the project with survey institutions — see Contribute and Partnerships.