World Language Map

Where is Machiguenga spoken?

Machiguenga is an Arawakan language, spoken in Peru. 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 Machiguenga is spoken

Machiguenga is spoken in one country: Peru.

Country
Peru

On the map, Machiguenga is drawn as an area from Walker and Ribeiro 2011 (Arawakan). The area was digitised by the Glottography project (doi:10.5281/zenodo.18643894), 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 Machiguenga.

How many people speak Machiguenga?

Wikidata gives about 6,200 speakers (Wikidata, with no source given, 2007). 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 Machiguenga sits in the language family tree

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

  1. Arawakan
  2. Southern Maipuran
  3. Kampa-Amuesha
  4. Pre-Andine Maipuran
  5. Asha-Ashe-Kak-Matsi-Nan
  6. Matsi-Nan
  7. Machiguenga

Related languages

Other languages in the Matsi-Nan group:

More about Machiguenga

Codes: ISO 639-3 mcb, Glottolog mach1267. Glottolog macroarea: South America.

Questions about Machiguenga

Where is Machiguenga spoken?

Machiguenga is spoken in Peru. On the map it is shown as an area from Walker and Ribeiro 2011 (Arawakan).

How many people speak Machiguenga?

Wikidata gives about 6,200 speakers (Wikidata, with no source given, 2007). 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 Machiguenga in?

Glottolog places Machiguenga in the Arawakan family, in the branch Southern Maipuran, Kampa-Amuesha, Pre-Andine Maipuran, Asha-Ashe-Kak-Matsi-Nan and Matsi-Nan.

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