World Language Map

Where is Meänkieli spoken?

Meänkieli (meänkieli) is an Uralic language, spoken in Sweden and Finland. It is marked on the map by a ringed point.

Tap or scroll to load the interactive map

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 Meänkieli is spoken

Meänkieli is spoken in 2 countries: Sweden and Finland. 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
Sweden0.6%58,244
FinlandNot 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.

Meänkieli 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 Meänkieli?

Wikidata gives about 70,000 speakers (Ethnologue, 2015). These figures are approximate: they come from different sources, years and definitions of a speaker.

Status: Moribund. Glottolog lists it as moribund: the youngest speakers are middle-aged or older, and children are no longer learning it.

Where Meänkieli sits in the language family tree

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

  1. Uralic
  2. Finnic
  3. Coastal Finnic
  4. Neva
  5. North Finnic
  6. Nuclear Finnish
  7. Meänkieli

Related languages

Other languages in the Nuclear Finnish group:

More about Meänkieli

Codes: ISO 639-3 fit, Glottolog torn1244. Glottolog macroarea: Eurasia.

Questions about Meänkieli

Where is Meänkieli spoken?

Meänkieli is spoken in Sweden and Finland. Unicode CLDR puts it at 0.6% of the population of Sweden, which is about 58,244 people. On the map it is shown as a single point, because no open area map covers it.

How many people speak Meänkieli?

Wikidata gives about 70,000 speakers (Ethnologue, 2015). 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 Meänkieli in?

Glottolog places Meänkieli in the Uralic family, in the branch Finnic, Coastal Finnic, Neva, North Finnic and Nuclear Finnish.

Embed this map

Copy this code into your web page. It is free to use. Please keep the link under the map, as it is how people find where the map comes from.