World Language Map

Where is Amba (Uganda) spoken?

Amba (Uganda) is an Atlantic-Congo language, spoken in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda. The outlined area on the map shows where.

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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.

Where Amba (Uganda) is spoken

Amba (Uganda) is spoken in 2 countries: the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda.

Country
Democratic Republic of the Congo
Uganda

On the map, Amba (Uganda) is drawn as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007. The area was digitised by the Glottography project (doi:10.5281/zenodo.18613195), and the atlas is cited on the data sources page. Language areas are generalisations, and cities and borderlands are multilingual, so the outline does not mean that everyone inside it speaks Amba (Uganda).

How many people speak Amba (Uganda)?

Wikidata gives about 40,000 speakers (Wikidata, with no source given, 2002). These figures are approximate: they come from different sources, years and definitions of a speaker.

Status: Threatened. Glottolog lists it as threatened: it is still spoken by all generations, but there are signs that the number of speakers is falling.

Where Amba (Uganda) sits in the language family tree

Glottolog classifies Amba (Uganda) as follows, from the largest family down to the language itself.

  1. Atlantic-Congo
  2. Volta-Congo
  3. Benue-Congo
  4. Bantoid
  5. Southern Bantoid
  6. Narrow Bantu
  7. Central-Western Bantu
  8. North Zaire River
  9. Rivers Bantu
  10. Ngiri
  11. Ngiri Terrien
  12. Ngombe-Ababuan
  13. Ababuan
  14. Old Bomokandian
  15. Komoic
  16. Amba (Uganda)

Related languages

Other languages in the Komoic group:

More about Amba (Uganda)

Codes: ISO 639-3 rwm, Glottolog amba1263. Glottolog macroarea: Africa.

Questions about Amba (Uganda)

Where is Amba (Uganda) spoken?

Amba (Uganda) is spoken in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda. On the map it is shown as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007.

How many people speak Amba (Uganda)?

Wikidata gives about 40,000 speakers (Wikidata, with no source given, 2002). Speaker numbers are approximate and differ between sources: counting who is a speaker, and whether to include second-language speakers, is not settled.

Which language family is Amba (Uganda) in?

Glottolog places Amba (Uganda) in the Atlantic-Congo family, in the branch Volta-Congo, Benue-Congo, Bantoid, Southern Bantoid, Narrow Bantu, Central-Western Bantu, North Zaire River, Rivers Bantu, Ngiri, Ngiri Terrien, Ngombe-Ababuan, Ababuan, Old Bomokandian and Komoic.

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