How Many Languages Are Needed To Travel Across Every Country?

There are lots of countries, with lots of languages, and people like traveling to many of them. So how many languages are needed to travel across every country?

Ethnologue: https://www.ethnologue.com/

How many languages does it take to travel to every country? If we’re simply arriving at the airport to have 
the country count and immediately leave, then you really only need English and a lot 
of time and money to pay for plane tickets. But where’s the fun in that? If you actually 
want to see what each country has to offer, you’re gonna need to know more languages 
than just English. So the question becomes, how many languages do you need to learn to travel across every country? The way I’m gonna quantify this into actual measurable data is using a threshold if you can speak the same language as at least 50% of a country’s population, then you can travel around that country. No tour guides allowed. The population and language speaker data for this video is taken primarily from Ethnologue, last updated in 2021, double-checking with census data to verify their numbers are accurate. With that out of the way, let’s start counting 
the languages we’d need to learn starting with Europe. Most European countries fall under the 
nation-state model, one country, one ethnicity, one language. Of course in the case of ethnicity and language this is never 100% the case, but regardless, we can take advantage of the fact that 
the majority of the population of these countries speak one language. This gives us English for traveling in the United Kingdom, French in France, Spanish in Spain, Portuguese in Portugal, Italian 
in Italy, Czech in Czechia, Polish in Poland, Hungarian in Hungary, Romanian in Romania and 
Moldova, Bulgarian in Bulgaria, Macedonian in North Macedonia, Albanian in Albania, Greek in Greece, Turkish in Turkey, and Russian in Russia. However, Europe is also very multilingual, and 
there are many countries where while their ethnic language is spoken by the majority of the 
country, a majority also speak another language, oftentimes English. The Scandinavian countries are notorious for this, where a huge chunk of the population speaks it in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, and even Iceland. And since the UK was a major colonial power it’s also 
spoken by the majority in Ireland, Malta, and Cyprus. Though in the case of Cyprus knowing Greek and Turkish also helps. The Netherlands is also notable for many people there speaking English, rendering Dutch not necessary for it, or even Belgium, where you should be fine with 
just English, French, and German. Oh shoot we forgot about Germany Let’s see. Oh, a slight majority of the German population speaks English, rendering German, a major world language 
unnecessary under the criteria. No worries, at least Austria doesn’t have a majority 
speaking English! Yes, yes it does. At least Switzerland has our back, right? No, it does not, and the French and Italian speaking parts of the country don’t help German’s viability. It turns out, our one saving grace is Liechtenstein, where the majority speaks German and no other language! Well, to be more precise, the majority speaks Alemannic German. So we’re forgoing all logic and learning Alemannic German instead of Standard German. Please don’t take this video too seriously. Speaking of Microstates, knowing French will 
let you travel across Monaco, and Italian for both San Marino and Vatican City. The majority of Andorra speaks Catalan, but you should probably be fine knowing Spanish, French, and Portuguese, and in Luxembourg, you’ll be fine with English, French, and Portuguese. Now I should probably address the Balkan sized elephant in the room, if you count Serbo-Croatian as one language, you 
need to learn it for Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro and if you count them separately, you’re learning Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian, for each. Whether or not you count Kosovo we’ve already learned Serbian and Albanian so it doesn’t matter either way. For the remaining countries you should be fine with a combination of English and Russian, the latter of which is spoken a lot in Eastern Europe because of previous Soviet influence. This brings our total of languages learned so far to about 17. Now let’s talk about a massive region starting 
with an A that has been heavily colonized by European nations, the Americas! While we could sit and talk about the interesting linguistic situations of all of these countries, all you need to know is that you can communicate across both continents perfectly fine with just English, Spanish, French, and Portuguese. Paraguay is the only country in the Americas where the 
majority speaks an indigenous language, Guaraní, and while the majority of Greenland speaks Danish, 
it’s a part of Denmark so it doesn’t count. Then we have the Carribean, where a particular pattern 
forms. Official language: English or French, speakers of English or French: a few thousand speakers of local French or English-based creole: basically everyone. So we need to learn Bahamas English Creole for the Bahamas, Jamaican Patois for Jamaica, Haitian Creole for Haiti Leeward Caribbean English Creole  for Saint Kitts and Nevis and Antigua and Barbuda, Lesser Antillean French Creole for Saint Lucia Vincentian English Creole for Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenadian English Creole for Grenada, Bajan Creole for Barbados Guyanese English Creole for Guyana, and Sranan Tongo for Suriname. These creoles are fairly similar and are pretty easy to learn for English speakers, but regardless this brings us to a total of 27 languages. Now let’s talk about another continent starting 
with A that has a very high amount of linguistic diversity, Asia! The countries where the principle of one country one language hold up are Azerbaijan with Azerbaijani, Iran with Farsi, Pakistan with Urdu, Afghanistan with Dari, Tajikistan with Tajik, Turkmenistan with Turkmen, Uzbekistan with Uzbek, Sri Lanka with Sinhalese, the Maldives with Dhivehi Nepal with Nepali, Bangladesh with Bengali, Myanmar with Burmese, Thailand with Thai, Laos with Lao, Cambodia with Khmer Vietnam with Vietnamese, China with Mandarin Chinese, Mongolia with Mongolian both Koreas with Korean, Japan with Japanese, Indonesia with Indonesian, East Timor with Tetum, 
and Malaysia and Brunei both have Malay spoken. Singapore is very linguistically diverse, with 
Mandarin, English, Malay, and Tamil spoken there, and since we already need 3 out of 4 of those 
languages, communication should go fine. Filipinos are pretty notorious for code switching with English, but just under half the population speaks it, so Tagalog is still required for The Philippines. India is also highly diverse, but a very good chunk of the population speaks Hindi, or at least one of the many dialects or languages of the Hindi belt. And with Hindi you could converse decently well with speakers of the other Indic languages, aided by English, and knowing Urdu and Bengali from Pakistan and Bangladesh help push the percentage of the population you can converse with well above 50%. But if you’re going to Southern India I’d recommend sticking 
with English, or picking up Kannada, Telugu, Tamil, or Malayalam. In Bhutan, Dzongkha is the sole official language, but is spoken by just under half of the country, English however should make up the remainder, but if not, you’re also picking up Tshangla. This brings us to about 53 languages in total that we need to learn. Then we have Georgia, Armenia, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan where just over half of the population knows Russian from Soviet times though for these countries and in Eastern Europe, the percentage of people who know Russian is decreasing with time, Smooth transition to talking about Oceania. Australia and New Zealand are both anglophone nations where English is the only language you really need for traveling purposes. The other Oceanian countries where you could get 
by with just English are Samoa, Nauru, the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, and Palau. Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands both have English creoles, Tok Pisin and Pijin respectively, that are known by at least half the population. Vanuatu also has the English creole Bislama, but you should be fine with just English and French. For the remaining countries, the local Oceanic languages are required for conversing with the majority of the population, so Fijian for Fiji, Tongan for Tonga, Tuvaluan 
for Tuvalu, and Gilbertese for Kiribati. Now let’s finally get to the region I’ve been avoiding talking about with plenty of desert where the line between languages is blurred. The Arab world! As you may know, there are 2 different varieties that speakers of Arabic tend to know. One is Modern Standard Arabic, MSA for short, which is the formal language used in news, politics, science, and business, and the many colloquial varieties of Arabic that people 
actually speak in their daily lives, varying from place to place. The colloquial varieties of Arabic include Hassaniya, Moroccan, Algerian, Tunisian, Libyan, Chadian, Sudanese, Egyptian, Levantine, 
Najdi, Hijazi, Hadrami, Sanaani Ta’izzi, Dhofari, Omani, Gulf, Bahraini, and Mesopotamian Arabic. That isn’t to say these are all necessarily different languages, since dialects that are spoken in geographically close regions tend to have relatively high mutual intelligibility, but two varieties spoken far apart from each other have low mutual intelligibility. And although most Arabs say they can usually understand MSA, most don’t know how to respond in it as they don’t actually speak it in casual conversation. At any rate, you’re gonna want to learn at least one colloquial variety, and Egyptian is simultaneously the most spoken, one of the most geographically centered, and the most widely understood thanks to the 
popularity of Egyptian movies within the Arab world. There are a handful of countries where MSA is known by less than half of the population, but there are work-arounds for most of these. French is widely spoken in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Lebanon, and to a lesser extent Mauritania, so French should help in those places. Not to mention the Hassaniya variety of Mauritania is the closest there is to colloquially spoken MSA. The gulf countries Saudi Arabia, Oman, The UAE, Qatar and Kuwait have a lot of migrant workers living there, who speak languages like Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, and Tagalog, all of which are required for other countries, and they get us to over 50% of the population in each country. Bahrain also has a notable number of Farsi speakers, and English also generally helps across the Arab world. And frankly the data for Chad is an outdated mess, so it’s best to pick up on Chadian Arabic just to be safe. This brings us up to a total of 62 languages learned, just in time for us to finally get around to Sub-saharan Africa. Africa of course is a very linguistically diverse continent, and in most African countries, there are many ethnic groups, each with their own languages. So there are few countries where speaking just one language lets you communicate with the vast majority of people. The countries where you could speak with 50% of the population with just European languages are Cape Verde, São Tomé e Príncipe, and Angola where Portuguese is needed, Equatorial Guinea with Spanish, French for Gabon, the Republic of Congo, and Mauritius English in Liberia, and a combination of English and French for Cameroon and the Seychelles. We’re also learning the Portuguese-based Guinea-Bissau creole for well, Guinea-Bissau, And the English creoles Krio and Nigerian Pidgin for Sierra Leone and Nigeria respectively. Hausa is also spoken by a good chunk of Nigeria’s population, and we’re picking it up for both it and Niger, where Hausa is spoken by a good majority of the nation. The other countries that have native 
African languages spoken by most of the population are Senegal with Wolof, Mali with Bambara, Somalia with Somali, Rwanda with Kinyarwanda, Burundi with Kirundi, 
Zimbabwe with Shona, Botswana with Setswana, Lesotho with Southern Sotho, eSwatini with Swati, 
Comoros with Comorian, and Madagascar where Malagasy is the majority language, and in all of these places French or English help. Swahili is  used as a lingua franca in Kenya and Tanzania, though in Kenya, Kikuyu would be helpful to pick up as well. The remaining countries reach 50% by combining 1 or more African languages with a European language. In many of these cases the language I recommend learning is just the language of the largest ethnic group, where oftentimes tensions between the country’s ethnic groups are high, so to the 1% of Africans watching this video, I do not mean to encourage the favoritism towards one 
ethnic group over the others in a given country. With that being said, let’s finish talking about the rest of the countries. In the Gambia, Wolof, English, and French are spoken, but combined they don’t reach 50%. For that we need to learn Mandinka, not to be confused with the Dinka language of South Sudan, which alongside English and Modern Standard Arabic is also required. In Guinea, both French and Pular are needed to reach a majority In the Ivory Coast, French and Jula are needed. Burkina Faso has Moore spoken by  a slight minority of the country, and French and Jula definitely help there. Togo is reached with French and Ewe, Ghana can reach 50% with English, Akan, and Ewe and to wrap up West Africa, Benin reaches our threshold with French, Fon, and Hausa. The Democratic Republic of the Congo has French as a national lingua franca, but also has 4 regional lingua francas that are all native African languages, of which Lingala is the most spoken, and Swahili which we’ve already learned is another. In the Central African Republic, Sango is spoken by a large enough portion of the country. Eritrea is listed as having MSA understood by a majority of the population, but if Arabs can’t speak it well I doubt Eritreans can as well, so pick up Tigrinya to be safe, and Djibouti can be traversed fine with French and Somali. Ethiopia has Amharic as the country’s lingua franca, 
spoken by just under half the population, while Oromo is close behind as the 2nd most spoken language in Ethiopia, we can reach 50% just fine with Tigrinya and Somali. In Uganda the data is also messy, but you should be fine with learning Luganda on top of English and Swahili. In Malawi, Chichewa is a slight majority language, with English helping. In Mozambique, Portuguese is spoken by just under half the population, and the largest African language there, Tsonga, gets us to 50%. For Zambia, knowing Bemba on top of English and Chichewa reaches a majority, and Ovambo alongside English is enough for Namibia. And at last, we have the final boss of linguistic 
diversity, South Africa! Granted India would’ve been a better final boss but I digress. English is widely spoken there, and Zulu is known by just under half the population, acting as a sort of lingua franca among black South Africans However, we’ve already learned Sotho, Swati, Tswana, and Tsonga for Lesotho, eSwatini, Bostwana, and Mozambique respectively, and that combined with English probably gets us to 50% for South Africa. And with that, we have an answer to the number 
of languages you’d need to travel and speak to at least 50% of the population of every country, which adds up to 96, give or take depending on which languages you really need and what you wanna consider different languages or separate forms of the same language. As a recap, the languages required for every country are *deep breath* English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, 
Czech, Polish, Hungarian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Albanian, Greek, Turkish, 
Russian, Alemannic German, Serbo-Croatian, Bahamas English Creole, Jamaican Patois, Haitian 
Creole, Leeward Caribbean English Creole, Lesser Antillean French Creole, Vincentian 
English Creole, Grenadian English Creole, Bajan Creole, Guyanese English Creole, Sranan 
Tongo, Azerbaijani, Farsi, Urdu, Dari, Tajik, Turkmen, Uzbek, Sinhalese, Dhivehi, Hindi, 
Nepali, Dzongkha, Bengali, Burmese, Thai, Lao, Khmer, Vietnamese, Mandarin Chinese, Mongolian, 
Korean, Japanese, Indonesian, Tetum, Malay, Tagalog, Tok Pisin, Pijin, Fijian, Tongan, 
Tuvaluan, Gilbertese, Modern Standard Arabic, Egyptian Arabic, Chadian Arabic, Guinea 
Bissau Creole, Krio, Nigerian Pidgin, Hausa, Wolof, Bambara, Somali, Kinayrwanda, 
Kirundi, Shona, Setswana, Southern Sotho, Swati, Comorian, Malagasy, Swahili, Kikuyu, 
Mandinka, Dinka, Pular, Jula, Moore, Ewe, Akan, Fon, Lingala, Sango, Tigrinya, Amharic, 
Luganda, Chichewa, Tsonga, Bemba, and Ovambo. Again, don’t take this list too seriously, it’s 
just answering a niche, not super applicable question for fun. Don’t try learning all of these languages at home, kids. For most destinations, you can get by with the help of tour guides and others catering to tourists, so you don’t really need to be fluent in the local language You probably don’t want to travel to every country either, and depending on the part of the countries 
you are traveling to, you may need a different language than otherwise expected. With that said, for any place you do want to visit, it is worth taking the time to understand the native language and culture fully without taking any shortcuts like this video did. Whether everyone speaks English or French or any other language you may already know, saying a phrase or two in the local languages could build connection and make some local’s day. To paraphrase Nelson Mandela, “If you talk to a person in a language they understand, that goes to their head. If you talk to them in their own language, that goes to their heart” Which is ironic because Nelson Mandela’s native language was Xhosa, which was not required to learn under the criteria. I’m not saying goodbye in all of these languages, tschüss.