World Language Map

Where is Central Okinawan spoken?

Central Okinawan (うちなーぐち) is a Japonic language, spoken in Japan. It is marked on the map by a ringed point.

Tap or scroll to load the interactive map

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 Central Okinawan is spoken

Central Okinawan is spoken in one country: Japan. 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
Japan0.8%948,655

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.

Central Okinawan has no area on the map because no open area map covers it. The ringed point is the position Glottolog gives for the language.

How many people speak Central Okinawan?

Wikidata gives about 984,000 speakers (Wikidata, with no source given). These figures are approximate: they come from different sources, years and definitions of a speaker.

Status: Moribund. Glottolog lists it as moribund: the youngest speakers are middle-aged or older, and children are no longer learning it.

Where Central Okinawan sits in the language family tree

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

  1. Japonic
  2. Ryukyuan
  3. Northern Ryukyuan
  4. Okinawa
  5. Central Okinawan

Related languages

Other languages in the Okinawa group:

More about Central Okinawan

Codes: ISO 639-3 ryu, Glottolog cent2126. Glottolog macroarea: Eurasia.

Questions about Central Okinawan

Where is Central Okinawan spoken?

Central Okinawan is spoken in Japan. Unicode CLDR puts it at 0.8% of the population of Japan, which is about 948,655 people. On the map it is shown as a single point, because no open area map covers it.

How many people speak Central Okinawan?

Wikidata gives about 984,000 speakers (Wikidata, with no source given). 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 Central Okinawan in?

Glottolog places Central Okinawan in the Japonic family, in the branch Ryukyuan, Northern Ryukyuan and Okinawa.

Embed this map

Copy this code into your web page. It is free to use. Please keep the link under the map, as it is how people find where the map comes from.