World Language Map

Where is Kis spoken?

Kis is an Austronesian language, spoken in Papua New Guinea. 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 Kis is spoken

Kis is spoken in one country: Papua New Guinea.

Country
Papua New Guinea

On the map, Kis 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 Kis.

How many people speak Kis?

Wikidata gives about 220 speakers (Wikidata, with no source given). These figures are approximate: they come from different sources, years and definitions of a speaker.

Status: Shifting. Glottolog lists it as shifting: the youngest speakers are adults, and children are growing up speaking another language.

Where Kis sits in the language family tree

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

  1. Austronesian
  2. Malayo-Polynesian
  3. Eastern Malayo-Polynesian
  4. Oceanic
  5. Western Oceanic linkage
  6. North New Guinea linkage
  7. Schouten linkage
  8. Kairiru-Manam
  9. Manamic linkage
  10. Kis-Wogeo
  11. Kis

Related languages

Other languages in the Kis-Wogeo group:

More about Kis

Codes: ISO 639-3 kis, Glottolog kiss1246. Glottolog macroarea: Papunesia.

Questions about Kis

Where is Kis spoken?

Kis is spoken in Papua New Guinea. On the map it is shown as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007.

How many people speak Kis?

Wikidata gives about 220 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 Kis in?

Glottolog places Kis in the Austronesian family, in the branch Malayo-Polynesian, Eastern Malayo-Polynesian, Oceanic, Western Oceanic linkage, North New Guinea linkage, Schouten linkage, Kairiru-Manam, Manamic linkage and Kis-Wogeo.

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