The State of Many Tongues Utah's Mormon missionaries make the state America's most linguistically diverse region, and it's paying off. If the builders of the legendary Tower of Babel had hired a work crew from Utah, the massive structure might actually have been completed instead of collapsing in the confusion of the workers' diverse languages. The linguistically savvy Utahans could have worked like bees in a hive. Or at least that is the boast among modern-day locals, who are using their language skills to build the economy of their home state. Sparsely populated, landlocked and laced with the deserts, mountains and rugged wilderness regions typical of the American West, Utah is an unlikely place to find people who collectively speak 90% of the world's written languages.