World Language Map

Where is Morisyen spoken?

Morisyen is an Indo-European language, spoken in Mauritius. 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 Morisyen is spoken

Morisyen is spoken in one country: Mauritius. 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
Mauritius90%1,179,450

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.

Morisyen 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 Morisyen?

Wikidata gives about 600,000 speakers (Wikidata, with no source given, 1989). 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 Morisyen sits in the language family tree

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

  1. Indo-European
  2. Classical Indo-European
  3. Italic
  4. Latino-Faliscan
  5. Latinic
  6. Imperial Latin
  7. Romance
  8. Italo-Western Romance
  9. Western Romance
  10. Shifted Western Romance
  11. Northwestern Shifted Romance
  12. Gallo-Rhaetian
  13. Oil
  14. Central Oil
  15. Macro-French
  16. Isle-de-France Creole
  17. Morisyen

Related languages

Other languages in the Isle-de-France Creole group:

More about Morisyen

Codes: ISO 639-3 mfe, Glottolog mori1278. Glottolog macroarea: Africa.

Morisyen is a Romance language, descended from Latin. Latin’s footprint: the Roman Empire at its height → Latin spread along Roman roads →

Questions about Morisyen

Where is Morisyen spoken?

Morisyen is spoken in Mauritius. Unicode CLDR puts it at 90% of the population of Mauritius, which is about 1,179,450 people. On the map it is shown as a single point, because no open area map covers it.

How many people speak Morisyen?

Wikidata gives about 600,000 speakers (Wikidata, with no source given, 1989). 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 Morisyen in?

Glottolog places Morisyen in the Indo-European family, in the branch Classical Indo-European, Italic, Latino-Faliscan, Latinic, Imperial Latin, Romance, Italo-Western Romance, Western Romance, Shifted Western Romance, Northwestern Shifted Romance, Gallo-Rhaetian, Oil, Central Oil, Macro-French and Isle-de-France Creole.

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