World Language Map

Where is Bukusu spoken?

Bukusu is an Atlantic-Congo language, spoken in Kenya 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 Bukusu is spoken

Bukusu is spoken in 2 countries: Kenya and Uganda.

Country
Kenya
Uganda

On the map, Bukusu 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 Bukusu.

How many people speak Bukusu?

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 Bukusu sits in the language family tree

Glottolog classifies Bukusu 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. East Bantu
  8. Northeast Savanna Bantu
  9. Great Lakes Bantu
  10. Greater Luyia
  11. Luyia
  12. Saamia-Wanga-Bukusu
  13. Northern Luyia
  14. Bukusu

Related languages

Other languages in the Northern Luyia group:

More about Bukusu

Codes: ISO 639-3 bxk, Glottolog buku1249. Glottolog macroarea: Africa.

Questions about Bukusu

Where is Bukusu spoken?

Bukusu is spoken in Kenya and Uganda. On the map it is shown as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007.

Which language family is Bukusu in?

Glottolog places Bukusu in the Atlantic-Congo family, in the branch Volta-Congo, Benue-Congo, Bantoid, Southern Bantoid, Narrow Bantu, East Bantu, Northeast Savanna Bantu, Great Lakes Bantu, Greater Luyia, Luyia, Saamia-Wanga-Bukusu and Northern Luyia.

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