Which languages have no written form and exist only as spoken words?

The answer

Of the world's approximately 7,168 living languages, an estimated 3,500 to 4,000 have no standardized written form. Many have never been written at all. Papua New Guinea alone has over 840 languages, the majority unwritten. Australia's indigenous languages (around 250 at European contact) were predominantly oral traditions. The Pirahã language of the Amazon, spoken by roughly 400 people, famously lacks words for numbers, colors, and perfect tense, challenging linguistic universals proposed by Noam Chomsky. Some languages are now being written for the first time through collaborative efforts with linguists - SIL International has helped develop writing systems for over 2,800 languages since 1934. The challenge is that oral languages carry knowledge through stories, songs, and proverbs that written transcription cannot fully capture.