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Border languages map

15 Border languages are on the map, most of them in Papua New Guinea and Indonesia. It divides into 3 main branches, the largest being Warisic (9 languages). The best-known members include Amanab and Awyi. 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 Border family at a glance

15languages
11drawn as areas
4shown as points
3main branches

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

Biggest Border languages

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

Where is Amanab spoken? (about 4,400 speakers)
Where is Awyi spoken? (about 350 speakers)

Branches of Border

The second level of the Glottolog family tree.

Warisic (9)
Bewani (4)
Taikat-Awyi (2)

Where Border languages are spoken

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

Papua New Guinea (12)
Indonesia (7)

All 15 Border languages, A to Z

Questions about Border languages

How many Border languages are there?

15 living Border languages are on this map, in the Glottolog classification. They fall into 3 main branches, the biggest being Warisic (9 languages). Other classifications group languages differently, so totals vary.

Where are Border languages spoken?

Papua New Guinea (12) and Indonesia (7) have the most Border languages, with the number of languages in brackets.