Skip to content

Wakashan languages map

5 Wakashan languages are on the map, most of them in Canada. It divides into 2 main branches, the largest being Northern Wakashan (3 languages). The best-known members include Kwak'wala and Heiltsuk-Oowekyala. Only this family is drawn; tap the map to list every language at a spot.

Tap or scroll to load the interactive map

Search for a language or a town

Show language family

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 Wakashan family at a glance

5languages
0drawn as areas
5shown as points
2main branches

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

Biggest Wakashan languages

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

Where is Kwak'wala spoken? (about 500 speakers)
Where is Heiltsuk-Oowekyala spoken? (about 90 speakers)

Branches of Wakashan

The second level of the Glottolog family tree.

Northern Wakashan (3)
Southern Wakashan (2)

Where Wakashan languages are spoken

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

Canada (5)

All 5 Wakashan languages, A to Z

Questions about Wakashan languages

How many Wakashan languages are there?

5 living Wakashan languages are on this map, in the Glottolog classification. They fall into 2 main branches, the biggest being Northern Wakashan (3 languages). Other classifications group languages differently, so totals vary.

Where are Wakashan languages spoken?

Canada (5) have the most Wakashan languages, with the number of languages in brackets.