World Language Map

Where is Krio spoken?

Krio is an Indo-European language, spoken in Sierra Leone, the Gambia, Guinea, Senegal and 1 more. It is marked on the map by a ringed point.

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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 Krio is spoken

Krio is spoken in 5 countries: Sierra Leone, the Gambia, Guinea, Senegal and 1 more. 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
Sierra Leone95%8,664,998
GambiaNot givenNot given
GuineaNot givenNot given
SenegalNot givenNot given
United StatesNot 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.

Krio 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 Krio?

Wikidata gives about 692,000 first-language speakers (Ethnologue, 2016). 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 Krio sits in the language family tree

Glottolog classifies Krio 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. North Sea Germanic
  7. Anglo-Frisian
  8. Anglic
  9. Later Anglic
  10. Middle-Modern English
  11. Macro-English
  12. Guinea Coast Creole English
  13. West African Creole English
  14. Krio

Related languages

Other languages in the West African Creole English group:

More about Krio

Codes: ISO 639-3 kri, Glottolog krio1253. Glottolog macroarea: Africa.

Questions about Krio

Where is Krio spoken?

Krio is spoken in Sierra Leone, the Gambia, Guinea, Senegal and 1 more. Unicode CLDR puts it at 95% of the population of Sierra Leone, which is about 8,664,998 people. On the map it is shown as a single point, because no open area map covers it.

How many people speak Krio?

Wikidata gives about 692,000 first-language speakers (Ethnologue, 2016). 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 Krio in?

Glottolog places Krio in the Indo-European family, in the branch Classical Indo-European, Germanic, Northwest Germanic, West Germanic, North Sea Germanic, Anglo-Frisian, Anglic, Later Anglic, Middle-Modern English, Macro-English, Guinea Coast Creole English and West African Creole English.

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