World Language Map

Siouan languages map

8 Siouan languages are on the map, most of them in United States and Canada. It divides into 2 main branches, the largest being Mississippi Valley (6 languages). The best-known members include Dakota, Crow and Lakota. 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 Siouan family at a glance

  • 8languages
  • 4drawn as areas
  • 4shown as points
  • 2main branches

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

Biggest Siouan languages

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

  1. Where is Dakota spoken? (about 3,100 speakers)
  2. Where is Crow spoken? (about 3,000 speakers)
  3. Where is Lakota spoken? (about 2,000 speakers)

Branches of Siouan

The second level of the Glottolog family tree.

  • Mississippi Valley (6)
  • Missouri River Siouan (2)

Where Siouan languages are spoken

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

All 8 Siouan languages, A to Z

Questions about Siouan languages

How many Siouan languages are there?

8 living Siouan languages are on this map, in the Glottolog classification. They fall into 2 main branches, the biggest being Mississippi Valley (6 languages). Other classifications group languages differently, so totals vary.

Where are Siouan languages spoken?

United States (7) and Canada (4) have the most Siouan languages, with the number of languages in brackets.

What are the biggest Siouan languages?

By the approximate speaker counts Wikidata holds: Dakota (about 3,100), Crow (about 3,000) and Lakota (about 2,000). These figures differ between sources and years.

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