World Language Map

Where is Kölsch spoken?

Kölsch is an Indo-European language, spoken in Germany. It is marked on the map by a ringed point.

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Language families (largest ten)

  • Atlantic-Congo
  • Austronesian
  • Sino-Tibetan
  • Indo-European
  • Afro-Asiatic
  • Nuclear Trans New Guinea
  • Otomanguean
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  • 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 Kölsch is spoken

Kölsch is spoken in one country: Germany. 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
Germany0.3%252,357

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.

Kölsch 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 Kölsch?

Wikidata holds no speaker count for this language. The table above has rough per-country estimates from Unicode CLDR.

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 Kölsch sits in the language family tree

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

  1. Indo-European
  2. Classical Indo-European
  3. Germanic
  4. Northwest Germanic
  5. West Germanic
  6. High German
  7. Middle German
  8. West Middle German
  9. Middle Franconian
  10. Ripuarian
  11. Kölsch

Related languages

Other languages in the Ripuarian group:

More about Kölsch

Codes: ISO 639-3 ksh, Glottolog kols1241. Glottolog macroarea: Eurasia.

Questions about Kölsch

Where is Kölsch spoken?

Kölsch is spoken in Germany. Unicode CLDR puts it at 0.3% of the population of Germany, which is about 252,357 people. On the map it is shown as a single point, because no open area map covers it.

Which language family is Kölsch in?

Glottolog places Kölsch in the Indo-European family, in the branch Classical Indo-European, Germanic, Northwest Germanic, West Germanic, High German, Middle German, West Middle German, Middle Franconian and Ripuarian.

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