World Language Map

North Halmahera languages map

15 North Halmahera languages are on the map, most of them in Indonesia. The best-known members include Ternate, Tobelo and Tabaru. Only this family is drawn; tap the map to list every language at a spot.

Tap or scroll to load the interactive map

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 North Halmahera family at a glance

  • 15languages
  • 10drawn as areas
  • 5shown as points

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

Biggest North Halmahera languages

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

  1. Where is Ternate spoken? (about 42,000 speakers)
  2. Where is Tobelo spoken? (about 28,000 speakers)
  3. Where is Tabaru spoken? (about 15,000 speakers)
  4. Where is West Makian spoken? (about 12,000 speakers)
  5. Where is Sahu spoken? (about 3,500 speakers)
  6. Where is Ibu spoken? (about 35 speakers)

Where North Halmahera languages are spoken

Countries with the most North Halmahera languages, with the number of languages in brackets.

All 15 North Halmahera languages, A to Z

Questions about North Halmahera languages

How many North Halmahera languages are there?

15 living North Halmahera languages are on this map, in the Glottolog classification. Other classifications group languages differently, so totals vary.

Where are North Halmahera languages spoken?

Indonesia (15) have the most North Halmahera languages, with the number of languages in brackets.

What are the biggest North Halmahera languages?

By the approximate speaker counts Wikidata holds: Ternate (about 42,000), Tobelo (about 28,000) and Tabaru (about 15,000). These figures differ between sources and years.

Embed this map

Copy this code into your web page. It is free to use. Please keep the link under the map, as it is how people find where the map comes from.