World Language Map

Where is Mwani spoken?

Mwani (Kimwani) is an Atlantic-Congo language, spoken in Mozambique. 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 Mwani is spoken

Mwani is spoken in one country: Mozambique.

Country
Mozambique

On the map, Mwani 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 Mwani.

How many people speak Mwani?

Wikidata gives about 100,000 first-language speakers (Ethnologue, 2006). 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 Mwani sits in the language family tree

Glottolog classifies Mwani 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. Northeast Savanna Bantu
  9. Northeast Coastal Bantu
  10. Coastal NEC Bantu
  11. Sabaki-Swahili
  12. Mwani

Related languages

Other languages in the Sabaki-Swahili group:

More about Mwani

Codes: ISO 639-3 wmw, Glottolog mwan1247. Glottolog macroarea: Africa.

Questions about Mwani

Where is Mwani spoken?

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

How many people speak Mwani?

Wikidata gives about 100,000 first-language speakers (Ethnologue, 2006). 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 Mwani in?

Glottolog places Mwani in the Atlantic-Congo family, in the branch Volta-Congo, Benue-Congo, Bantoid, Southern Bantoid, Narrow Bantu, East Bantu, Northeast Savanna Bantu, Northeast Coastal Bantu, Coastal NEC Bantu and Sabaki-Swahili.

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