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Dogon languages map

20 Dogon languages are on the map, most of them in Mali and Burkina Faso. It divides into 5 main branches, the largest being West Dogon (5 languages). 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 Dogon family at a glance

20languages
14drawn as areas
6shown as points
5main branches

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

Branches of Dogon

The second level of the Glottolog family tree.

West Dogon (5)
North Plateau Dogon (5)
Plains Dogon (4)
Escarpment Dogon (3)
Nangan Dogon (3)

Where Dogon languages are spoken

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

Mali (20)
Burkina Faso (13)

All 20 Dogon languages, A to Z

Questions about Dogon languages

How many Dogon languages are there?

20 living Dogon languages are on this map, in the Glottolog classification. They fall into 5 main branches, the biggest being West Dogon (5 languages). Other classifications group languages differently, so totals vary.

Where are Dogon languages spoken?

Mali (20) and Burkina Faso (13) have the most Dogon languages, with the number of languages in brackets.