World Language Map

Where is Herero spoken?

Herero (Otsiherero) is an Atlantic-Congo language, spoken in Namibia, Angola and Botswana. The outlined area on the map shows where.

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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 Herero is spoken

Herero is spoken in 3 countries: Namibia, Angola and Botswana. 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
Namibia9.1%255,133
AngolaNot givenNot given
BotswanaNot 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, Herero 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 Herero.

How many people speak Herero?

Wikidata gives about 237,000 speakers (Wikidata, with no source given). These figures are approximate: they come from different sources, years and definitions of a speaker.

Status: Threatened. Glottolog lists it as threatened: it is still spoken by all generations, but there are signs that the number of speakers is falling.

Where Herero sits in the language family tree

Glottolog classifies Herero 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. Central-Western Bantu
  8. Njila
  9. Southern Njila
  10. Kunene
  11. Cimbebasia
  12. Herero (R.30)
  13. Herero

Related languages

Other languages in the Herero (R.30) group:

More about Herero

Codes: ISO 639-3 her, Glottolog here1253. Glottolog macroarea: Africa.

Questions about Herero

Where is Herero spoken?

Herero is spoken in Namibia, Angola and Botswana. Unicode CLDR puts it at 9.1% of the population of Namibia, which is about 255,133 people. On the map it is shown as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007.

How many people speak Herero?

Wikidata gives about 237,000 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 Herero in?

Glottolog places Herero in the Atlantic-Congo family, in the branch Volta-Congo, Benue-Congo, Bantoid, Southern Bantoid, Narrow Bantu, Central-Western Bantu, Njila, Southern Njila, Kunene, Cimbebasia and Herero (R.30).

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