World Language Map

Where is Big Nambas spoken?

Big Nambas is an Austronesian language, spoken in Vanuatu. 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 Big Nambas is spoken

Big Nambas is spoken in one country: Vanuatu.

Country
Vanuatu

On the map, Big Nambas 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 Big Nambas.

How many people speak Big Nambas?

Wikidata holds no speaker count for this language.

Status: Not endangered. Glottolog lists it as not endangered: it is still being passed on to children.

Where Big Nambas sits in the language family tree

Glottolog classifies Big Nambas as follows, from the largest family down to the language itself.

  1. Austronesian
  2. Malayo-Polynesian
  3. Eastern Malayo-Polynesian
  4. Oceanic
  5. North and Central Vanuatu
  6. Central Vanuatu
  7. Malakula
  8. Western Malakula linkage
  9. Peripheral Western Malakula
  10. Northwestern Malakula
  11. Big Nambas

Related languages

Other languages in the Northwestern Malakula group:

More about Big Nambas

Codes: ISO 639-3 nmb, Glottolog bign1238. Glottolog macroarea: Papunesia.

Questions about Big Nambas

Where is Big Nambas spoken?

Big Nambas is spoken in Vanuatu. On the map it is shown as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007.

Which language family is Big Nambas in?

Glottolog places Big Nambas in the Austronesian family, in the branch Malayo-Polynesian, Eastern Malayo-Polynesian, Oceanic, North and Central Vanuatu, Central Vanuatu, Malakula, Western Malakula linkage, Peripheral Western Malakula and Northwestern Malakula.

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