World Language Map

Sepik languages map

36 Sepik languages are on the map, most of them in Papua New Guinea. It divides into 6 main branches, the largest being Sepik Hill (15 languages). The best-known members include Abau, Alamblak and Saniyo-Hiyewe. 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 Sepik family at a glance

  • 36languages
  • 31drawn as areas
  • 5shown as points
  • 6main branches

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

Biggest Sepik languages

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

  1. Where is Abau spoken? (about 7,270 speakers)
  2. Where is Alamblak spoken? (about 1,500 speakers)
  3. Where is Saniyo-Hiyewe spoken? (about 1,300 speakers)

Branches of Sepik

The second level of the Glottolog family tree.

  • Sepik Hill (15)
  • Sepik Tama (6)
  • Iwam-Wogamus (4)
  • Ram (3)
  • Nukuma (3)
  • Yellow River (3)

Where Sepik languages are spoken

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

All 36 Sepik languages, A to Z

Questions about Sepik languages

How many Sepik languages are there?

36 living Sepik languages are on this map, in the Glottolog classification. They fall into 6 main branches, the biggest being Sepik Hill (15 languages). Other classifications group languages differently, so totals vary.

Where are Sepik languages spoken?

Papua New Guinea (36) have the most Sepik languages, with the number of languages in brackets.

What are the biggest Sepik languages?

By the approximate speaker counts Wikidata holds: Abau (about 7,270), Alamblak (about 1,500) and Saniyo-Hiyewe (about 1,300). These figures differ between sources and years.

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