World Language Map

Mande languages map

73 Mande languages are on the map, most of them in Guinea, Ivory Coast and Mali. It divides into 2 main branches, the largest being Western Mande (53 languages). The best-known members include Bambara, Dyula and Susu. 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 Mande family at a glance

  • 73languages
  • 43drawn as areas
  • 30shown as points
  • 2main branches

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

Biggest Mande languages

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

  1. Where is Bambara spoken? (about 4.2 million speakers)
  2. Where is Dyula spoken? (about 2.7 million speakers)
  3. Where is Susu spoken? (about 2.4 million speakers)
  4. Where is Mandinka spoken? (about 1.4 million speakers)
  5. Where is Soninke spoken? (about 1.1 million speakers)

Branches of Mande

The second level of the Glottolog family tree.

  • Western Mande (53)
  • Eastern Mande (20)

Where Mande languages are spoken

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

All 73 Mande languages, A to Z

Questions about Mande languages

How many Mande languages are there?

73 living Mande languages are on this map, in the Glottolog classification. They fall into 2 main branches, the biggest being Western Mande (53 languages). Other classifications group languages differently, so totals vary.

Where are Mande languages spoken?

Guinea (29), Ivory Coast (26), Mali (25), Burkina Faso (15), Liberia (12) and Sierra Leone (10) have the most Mande languages, with the number of languages in brackets.

What are the biggest Mande languages?

By the approximate speaker counts Wikidata holds: Bambara (about 4.2 million), Dyula (about 2.7 million) and Susu (about 2.4 million). These figures differ between sources and years.

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