World Language Map

Afro-Asiatic languages map

332 Afro-Asiatic languages are on the map, most of them in Nigeria, Cameroon and Chad. It divides into 4 main branches, the largest being Chadic (194 languages). The best-known members include Standard Arabic, Egyptian Arabic and Levantine Arabic. Only this family is drawn; tap the map to list every language at a spot.

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The filter only changes what is drawn. Tap the map to list every language at a spot, whichever family is shown. You can also pick any family from its own page.

Key

Language families (largest ten)

  • Atlantic-Congo
  • Austronesian
  • Sino-Tibetan
  • Indo-European
  • Afro-Asiatic
  • Nuclear Trans New Guinea
  • Otomanguean
  • Austroasiatic
  • Tai-Kadai
  • Pama-Nyungan

Everything else

  • All other families Smaller families, isolates and unclassified languages.
  • Point A language with no area map. The dot sits at its Glottolog position, in its family colour.

How to read the map. Each colour is a language family: a group of languages that share a common ancestor. The ten largest families have their own colour and every other family is grey. Areas are see-through, so where two languages share a place the colours mix. Tap anywhere to list every language whose area covers that spot. Areas are generalisations drawn from published atlases, many of them decades old, and cities are multilingual, so an area never says that everyone there speaks the language. A dot marks a language that has no area map. The family name is always given in words, because colour alone is hard to tell apart for some people.

The Afro-Asiatic family at a glance

  • 332languages
  • 231drawn as areas
  • 101shown as points
  • 4main branches

Colours on the map mark the ten largest families; this page’s filter shows Afro-Asiatic alone. Areas are generalisations from published atlases and overlap with the areas of other families.

Biggest Afro-Asiatic languages

By approximate speaker counts from Wikidata, each with its source and year on its own page.

  1. Where is Standard Arabic spoken? (about 335 million speakers)
  2. Where is Egyptian Arabic spoken? (about 64.6 million speakers)
  3. Where is Levantine Arabic spoken? (about 44 million speakers)
  4. Where is Hausa spoken? (about 43.9 million speakers)
  5. Where is Algerian Arabic spoken? (about 42.3 million speakers)
  6. Where is Sudanese Arabic spoken? (about 31.9 million speakers)
  7. Where is Moroccan Arabic spoken? (about 27.5 million speakers)
  8. Where is Saidi Arabic spoken? (about 22.4 million speakers)
  9. Where is Amharic spoken? (about 21.9 million speakers)
  10. Where is Somali spoken? (about 16.2 million speakers)

Branches of Afro-Asiatic

The second level of the Glottolog family tree.

  • Chadic (194)
  • Semitic (71)
  • Cushitic (43)
  • Berber (24)

Where Afro-Asiatic languages are spoken

Countries with the most Afro-Asiatic languages, with the number of languages in brackets.

All 332 Afro-Asiatic languages, A to Z

Questions about Afro-Asiatic languages

How many Afro-Asiatic languages are there?

332 living Afro-Asiatic languages are on this map, in the Glottolog classification. They fall into 4 main branches, the biggest being Chadic (194 languages). Other classifications group languages differently, so totals vary.

Where are Afro-Asiatic languages spoken?

Nigeria (121), Cameroon (65), Chad (59), Ethiopia (40), Algeria (20) and Israel (17) have the most Afro-Asiatic languages, with the number of languages in brackets.

What are the biggest Afro-Asiatic languages?

By the approximate speaker counts Wikidata holds: Standard Arabic (about 335 million), Egyptian Arabic (about 64.6 million) and Levantine Arabic (about 44 million). These figures differ between sources and years.

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