World Language Map

Maban languages map

9 Maban languages are on the map, most of them in Chad. It divides into 2 main branches, the largest being Maba-Masalit (7 languages). The best-known members include Maba (Chad), Kibet and Karanga. 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 Maban family at a glance

  • 9languages
  • 5drawn as areas
  • 4shown as points
  • 2main branches

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

Biggest Maban languages

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

  1. Where is Maba (Chad) spoken? (about 296,000 speakers)
  2. Where is Kibet spoken? (about 19,000 speakers)
  3. Where is Karanga spoken? (about 10,000 speakers)

Branches of Maban

The second level of the Glottolog family tree.

  • Maba-Masalit (7)
  • Runga-Kibet (2)

Where Maban languages are spoken

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

All 9 Maban languages, A to Z

Questions about Maban languages

How many Maban languages are there?

9 living Maban languages are on this map, in the Glottolog classification. They fall into 2 main branches, the biggest being Maba-Masalit (7 languages). Other classifications group languages differently, so totals vary.

Where are Maban languages spoken?

Chad (9), Central African Republic (2), Sudan (2), Cameroon (1) and Nigeria (1) have the most Maban languages, with the number of languages in brackets.

What are the biggest Maban languages?

By the approximate speaker counts Wikidata holds: Maba (Chad) (about 296,000), Kibet (about 19,000) and Karanga (about 10,000). These figures differ between sources and years.

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