World Language Map

Where is Mashi (Zambia) spoken?

Mashi (Zambia) is an Atlantic-Congo language, spoken in Angola, Namibia and Zambia. The outlined area on the map shows where.

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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 Mashi (Zambia) is spoken

Mashi (Zambia) is spoken in 3 countries: Angola, Namibia and Zambia.

Country
Angola
Namibia
Zambia

On the map, Mashi (Zambia) is drawn as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007. The area was digitised by the Glottography project (doi:10.5281/zenodo.18613195), 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 Mashi (Zambia).

How many people speak Mashi (Zambia)?

Wikidata holds no speaker count for this language.

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 Mashi (Zambia) sits in the language family tree

Glottolog classifies Mashi (Zambia) as follows, from the largest family down to the language itself.

  1. Atlantic-Congo
  2. Volta-Congo
  3. Benue-Congo
  4. Bantoid
  5. Southern Bantoid
  6. Narrow Bantu
  7. Central-Western Bantu
  8. Greater Luyana
  9. Western Greater Luyana
  10. Mashi-Mbukushi
  11. Mashi (Zambia)

Related languages

Other languages in the Mashi-Mbukushi group:

More about Mashi (Zambia)

Codes: ISO 639-3 mho, Glottolog mash1267. Glottolog macroarea: Africa.

Questions about Mashi (Zambia)

Where is Mashi (Zambia) spoken?

Mashi (Zambia) is spoken in Angola, Namibia and Zambia. On the map it is shown as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007.

Which language family is Mashi (Zambia) in?

Glottolog places Mashi (Zambia) in the Atlantic-Congo family, in the branch Volta-Congo, Benue-Congo, Bantoid, Southern Bantoid, Narrow Bantu, Central-Western Bantu, Greater Luyana, Western Greater Luyana and Mashi-Mbukushi.

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