World Language Map

Where is Matengo spoken?

Matengo is an Atlantic-Congo language, spoken in Mozambique and Tanzania. 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 Matengo is spoken

Matengo is spoken in 2 countries: Mozambique and Tanzania.

Country
Mozambique
Tanzania

On the map, Matengo 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 Matengo.

How many people speak Matengo?

Wikidata holds no speaker count for this language.

Status: Not endangered. Glottolog lists it as not endangered: it is still being passed on to children.

Where Matengo sits in the language family tree

Glottolog classifies Matengo 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. East Bantu
  8. Rufiji-Ruvuma
  9. Rufijic
  10. Matengo-Rufiji
  11. South Mbinda
  12. Matengo

Related languages

Other languages in the South Mbinda group:

More about Matengo

Codes: ISO 639-3 mgv, Glottolog mate1258. Glottolog macroarea: Africa.

Questions about Matengo

Where is Matengo spoken?

Matengo is spoken in Mozambique and Tanzania. On the map it is shown as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007.

Which language family is Matengo in?

Glottolog places Matengo in the Atlantic-Congo family, in the branch Volta-Congo, Benue-Congo, Bantoid, Southern Bantoid, Narrow Bantu, East Bantu, Rufiji-Ruvuma, Rufijic, Matengo-Rufiji and South Mbinda.

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