World Language Map

Where is Lou spoken?

Lou is an Austronesian language, spoken in Papua New Guinea. It is marked on the map by a ringed point.

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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 Lou is spoken

Lou is spoken in one country: Papua New Guinea.

Country
Papua New Guinea

Lou 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 Lou?

Wikidata gives about 1,000 speakers (Wikidata, with no source given, 1994). 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 Lou sits in the language family tree

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

  1. Austronesian
  2. Malayo-Polynesian
  3. Eastern Malayo-Polynesian
  4. Oceanic
  5. Admiralty Islands
  6. Eastern Admiralty Islands
  7. South-East Admiralty
  8. Lou-Paluai
  9. Lou

Related languages

Other languages in the Lou-Paluai group:

More about Lou

Codes: ISO 639-3 loj, Glottolog louu1245. Glottolog macroarea: Papunesia.

Questions about Lou

Where is Lou spoken?

Lou is spoken in Papua New Guinea. On the map it is shown as a single point, because no open area map covers it.

How many people speak Lou?

Wikidata gives about 1,000 speakers (Wikidata, with no source given, 1994). 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 Lou in?

Glottolog places Lou in the Austronesian family, in the branch Malayo-Polynesian, Eastern Malayo-Polynesian, Oceanic, Admiralty Islands, Eastern Admiralty Islands, South-East Admiralty and Lou-Paluai.

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