World Language Map

Saliban languages map

3 Saliban languages are on the map, most of them in Venezuela and Colombia. The best-known members include Piaroa, Maco and Sáliba. 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 Saliban family at a glance

  • 3languages
  • 1drawn as areas
  • 2shown as points

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

Biggest Saliban languages

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

  1. Where is Piaroa spoken? (about 14,000 speakers)
  2. Where is Maco spoken? (about 2,500 speakers)
  3. Where is Sáliba spoken? (about 1,500 speakers)

Where Saliban languages are spoken

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

All 3 Saliban languages, A to Z

Questions about Saliban languages

How many Saliban languages are there?

3 living Saliban languages are on this map, in the Glottolog classification. Other classifications group languages differently, so totals vary.

Where are Saliban languages spoken?

Venezuela (3) and Colombia (2) have the most Saliban languages, with the number of languages in brackets.

What are the biggest Saliban languages?

By the approximate speaker counts Wikidata holds: Piaroa (about 14,000), Maco (about 2,500) and Sáliba (about 1,500). These figures differ between sources and years.

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