World Language Map

Where is Ligurian spoken?

Ligurian (Lengoa ligure) is an Indo-European language, spoken in Italy, France and Monaco. It is marked on the map by a ringed point.

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Language families (largest ten)

  • Atlantic-Congo
  • Austronesian
  • Sino-Tibetan
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  • 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 Ligurian is spoken

Ligurian is spoken in 3 countries: Italy, France and Monaco. 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
Italy0.9%524,298
FranceNot givenNot given
MonacoNot 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.

Ligurian 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 Ligurian?

Wikidata gives about 500,000 speakers (ethnologue.com). 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 Ligurian sits in the language family tree

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

  1. Indo-European
  2. Classical Indo-European
  3. Italic
  4. Latino-Faliscan
  5. Latinic
  6. Imperial Latin
  7. Romance
  8. Italo-Western Romance
  9. Western Romance
  10. Shifted Western Romance
  11. Northwestern Shifted Romance
  12. Gallo-Italian
  13. Ligurian

Related languages

Other languages in the Gallo-Italian group:

More about Ligurian

Codes: ISO 639-3 lij, Glottolog ligu1248. Glottolog macroarea: Eurasia.

Ligurian is a Romance language, descended from Latin. Latin’s footprint: the Roman Empire at its height → Latin spread along Roman roads →

Questions about Ligurian

Where is Ligurian spoken?

Ligurian is spoken in Italy, France and Monaco. Unicode CLDR puts it at 0.9% of the population of Italy, which is about 524,298 people. On the map it is shown as a single point, because no open area map covers it.

How many people speak Ligurian?

Wikidata gives about 500,000 speakers (ethnologue.com). 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 Ligurian in?

Glottolog places Ligurian in the Indo-European family, in the branch Classical Indo-European, Italic, Latino-Faliscan, Latinic, Imperial Latin, Romance, Italo-Western Romance, Western Romance, Shifted Western Romance, Northwestern Shifted Romance and Gallo-Italian.

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