World Language Map

Where is Northwestern Lingala spoken?

Northwestern Lingala is an Atlantic-Congo language, spoken in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. 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 Northwestern Lingala is spoken

Northwestern Lingala is spoken in one country: the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Country
Democratic Republic of the Congo

On the map, Northwestern Lingala 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 Northwestern Lingala.

How many people speak Northwestern Lingala?

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 Northwestern Lingala sits in the language family tree

Glottolog classifies Northwestern Lingala 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. North Zaire River
  9. Rivers Bantu
  10. Ngiri
  11. Ngiri Riverain Ubangi
  12. Ngiri Riverain Ubangi-Ripuaire
  13. Bobangic
  14. Bobangic Riverain
  15. Bobangi-Bangala-Lingala
  16. Lingala-Bangala
  17. Northwestern Lingala

Related languages

Other languages in the Lingala-Bangala group:

More about Northwestern Lingala

Codes: Glottolog nort3345. Glottolog macroarea: Africa.

Questions about Northwestern Lingala

Where is Northwestern Lingala spoken?

Northwestern Lingala is spoken in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. On the map it is shown as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007.

Which language family is Northwestern Lingala in?

Glottolog places Northwestern Lingala in the Atlantic-Congo family, in the branch Volta-Congo, Benue-Congo, Bantoid, Southern Bantoid, Narrow Bantu, Central-Western Bantu, North Zaire River, Rivers Bantu, Ngiri, Ngiri Riverain Ubangi, Ngiri Riverain Ubangi-Ripuaire, Bobangic, Bobangic Riverain, Bobangi-Bangala-Lingala and Lingala-Bangala.

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