Where is Chakma spoken?

Chakma (Changmha Bhach) is an Indo-European language, spoken in Bangladesh and India. It is marked on the map by a ringed point.

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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 Chakma is spoken

Chakma is spoken in 2 countries: Bangladesh and India. 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
Bangladesh0.2%371,133
IndiaNot 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.

Chakma 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 Chakma?

Wikidata gives about 326,000 speakers (Ethnologue, 2007). 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 Chakma sits in the language family tree

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

  1. Indo-European
  2. Classical Indo-European
  3. Indo-Iranian
  4. Indo-Aryan
  5. Middle-Modern Indo-Aryan
  6. Continental Indo-Aryan
  7. Indo-Aryan Eastern zone
  8. Oriya-Gauda-Kamrupa
  9. Gauda-Kamrupa
  10. Gauda-Banga
  11. Southeastern Bengali
  12. Chakma

Related languages

Other languages in the Southeastern Bengali group:

More about Chakma

Codes: ISO 639-3 ccp, Glottolog chak1266. Glottolog macroarea: Eurasia.

Questions about Chakma

Where is Chakma spoken?

Chakma is spoken in Bangladesh and India. Unicode CLDR puts it at 0.2% of the population of Bangladesh, which is about 371,133 people. On the map it is shown as a single point, because no open area map covers it.

How many people speak Chakma?

Wikidata gives about 326,000 speakers (Ethnologue, 2007). 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 Chakma in?

Glottolog places Chakma in the Indo-European family, in the branch Classical Indo-European, Indo-Iranian, Indo-Aryan, Middle-Modern Indo-Aryan, Continental Indo-Aryan, Indo-Aryan Eastern zone, Oriya-Gauda-Kamrupa, Gauda-Kamrupa, Gauda-Banga and Southeastern Bengali.

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