World Language Map

Saharan languages map

8 Saharan languages are on the map, most of them in Niger, Chad and Sudan. It divides into 2 main branches, the largest being Western Saharan (7 languages). The best-known members include Central Kanuri, Beria and Tedaga. 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 Saharan family at a glance

  • 8languages
  • 5drawn as areas
  • 3shown as points
  • 2main branches

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

Biggest Saharan languages

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

  1. Where is Central Kanuri spoken? (about 9.3 million speakers)
  2. Where is Beria spoken? (about 274,000 speakers)
  3. Where is Tedaga spoken? (about 43,000 speakers)

Branches of Saharan

The second level of the Glottolog family tree.

  • Western Saharan (7)
  • Eastern Saharan (1)

Where Saharan languages are spoken

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

All 8 Saharan languages, A to Z

Questions about Saharan languages

How many Saharan languages are there?

8 living Saharan languages are on this map, in the Glottolog classification. They fall into 2 main branches, the biggest being Western Saharan (7 languages). Other classifications group languages differently, so totals vary.

Where are Saharan languages spoken?

Niger (7), Chad (6), Sudan (3), Libya (3), Nigeria (3) and Cameroon (1) have the most Saharan languages, with the number of languages in brackets.

What are the biggest Saharan languages?

By the approximate speaker counts Wikidata holds: Central Kanuri (about 9.3 million), Beria (about 274,000) and Tedaga (about 43,000). These figures differ between sources and years.

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