World Language Map

Uralic languages map

41 Uralic languages are on the map, most of them in Russia and Finland. It divides into 9 main branches, the largest being Finnic (11 languages). The best-known members include Hungarian, Finnish and Estonian. 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 Uralic family at a glance

  • 41languages
  • 15drawn as areas
  • 26shown as points
  • 9main branches

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

Biggest Uralic languages

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

  1. Where is Hungarian spoken? (about 12.6 million speakers)
  2. Where is Finnish spoken? (about 5.4 million speakers)
  3. Where is Estonian spoken? (about 1.3 million speakers)
  4. Where is Eastern Mari spoken? (about 482,000 speakers)
  5. Where is Udmurt spoken? (about 270,000 speakers)
  6. Where is Komi-Zyrian spoken? (about 156,000 speakers)
  7. Where is Erzya spoken? (about 97,000 speakers)
  8. Where is South Estonian spoken? (about 80,000 speakers)
  9. Where is Meänkieli spoken? (about 70,000 speakers)
  10. Where is Komi-Permyak spoken? (about 63,000 speakers)

Branches of Uralic

The second level of the Glottolog family tree.

  • Finnic (11)
  • Saami (9)
  • Samoyedic (6)
  • Permian (4)
  • Khantyic (4)
  • Mari (2)
  • Mordvin (2)
  • Mansic (2)
  • Hungaric (1)

Where Uralic languages are spoken

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

All 41 Uralic languages, A to Z

Questions about Uralic languages

How many Uralic languages are there?

41 living Uralic languages are on this map, in the Glottolog classification. They fall into 9 main branches, the biggest being Finnic (11 languages). Other classifications group languages differently, so totals vary.

Where are Uralic languages spoken?

Russia (33), Finland (9), Norway (8), Sweden (7), Estonia (5) and Kazakhstan (3) have the most Uralic languages, with the number of languages in brackets.

What are the biggest Uralic languages?

By the approximate speaker counts Wikidata holds: Hungarian (about 12.6 million), Finnish (about 5.4 million) and Estonian (about 1.3 million). These figures differ between sources and years.

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