Anim languages map

16 Anim languages are on the map, most of them in Papua New Guinea and Indonesia. It divides into 3 main branches, the largest being Marind-Boazi-Yaqai (6 languages). The best-known members include Marind. 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 Anim family at a glance

  • 16languages
  • 11drawn as areas
  • 5shown as points
  • 3main branches

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

Biggest Anim languages

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

  1. Where is Marind spoken? (about 7,000 speakers)

Branches of Anim

The second level of the Glottolog family tree.

  • Marind-Boazi-Yaqai (6)
  • Inland Gulf of Papua (5)
  • Tirio (5)

Where Anim languages are spoken

Countries with the most Anim languages, with the number of languages in brackets.

All 16 Anim languages, A to Z

Questions about Anim languages

How many Anim languages are there?

16 living Anim languages are on this map, in the Glottolog classification. They fall into 3 main branches, the biggest being Marind-Boazi-Yaqai (6 languages). Other classifications group languages differently, so totals vary.

Where are Anim languages spoken?

Papua New Guinea (13) and Indonesia (5) have the most Anim languages, with the number of languages in brackets.

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