World Language Map

Where is Burmese spoken?

Burmese (မြန်မာဘာသာစကား) is a Sino-Tibetan language, spoken in Myanmar, Bangladesh and Thailand. 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 Burmese is spoken

Burmese is spoken in 3 countries: Myanmar, Bangladesh and Thailand. The table gives the share of each country’s people who speak it, from Unicode CLDR, where CLDR has a figure.

CountryShare of populationEstimated speakers
Myanmar64%36,817,344
Bangladesh0.2%354,264
ThailandNot givenNot given

Estimated speakers are the CLDR percentage applied to CLDR’s own population figure for the country, so they are rough. A country without a figure may still have speakers: it is listed because the language area, or Glottolog’s record, reaches it.

On the map, Burmese 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 Burmese.

How many people speak Burmese?

Wikidata gives about 32.9 million first-language speakers (Ethnologue, 2019). It also lists about 10 million second-language speakers (Wikidata, with no source given, 2000). These figures are approximate: they come from different sources, years and definitions of a speaker.

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

Where Burmese sits in the language family tree

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

  1. Sino-Tibetan
  2. Burmo-Qiangic
  3. Lolo-Burmese
  4. Burmish
  5. Southern Burmish
  6. Mranmaic
  7. Nuclear Mranmaic
  8. Burmese

Related languages

Other languages in the Nuclear Mranmaic group:

More about Burmese

Codes: ISO 639-3 mya, Glottolog nucl1310. Glottolog macroarea: Eurasia.

Questions about Burmese

Where is Burmese spoken?

Burmese is spoken in Myanmar, Bangladesh and Thailand. Unicode CLDR puts it at 64% of the population of Myanmar, which is about 36,817,344 people. On the map it is shown as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007.

How many people speak Burmese?

Wikidata gives about 32.9 million first-language speakers (Ethnologue, 2019). Speaker numbers are approximate and differ between sources: counting who is a speaker, and whether to include second-language speakers, is not settled. It also lists about 10 million second-language speakers (Wikidata, with no source given, 2000).

Which language family is Burmese in?

Glottolog places Burmese in the Sino-Tibetan family, in the branch Burmo-Qiangic, Lolo-Burmese, Burmish, Southern Burmish, Mranmaic and Nuclear Mranmaic.

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