World Language Map

Where is Rohingya spoken?

Rohingya is an Indo-European language, spoken in Myanmar, Bangladesh and Thailand. 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 Rohingya is spoken

Rohingya is spoken in 3 countries: Myanmar, Bangladesh and Thailand. 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
Myanmar1.7%977,961
Bangladesh0.5%894,094
ThailandNot 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.

Rohingya 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 Rohingya?

Wikidata gives about 1.8 million speakers (Wikidata, with no source given, 2012). 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 Rohingya sits in the language family tree

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

  1. Indo-European
  2. Classical Indo-European
  3. Indo-Iranian
  4. Indo-Aryan
  5. Middle-Modern Indo-Aryan
  6. Continental Indo-Aryan
  7. Indo-Aryan Eastern zone
  8. Oriya-Gauda-Kamrupa
  9. Gauda-Kamrupa
  10. Gauda-Banga
  11. Rohingya

Related languages

Other languages in the Gauda-Banga group:

More about Rohingya

Codes: ISO 639-3 rhg, Glottolog rohi1238. Glottolog macroarea: Eurasia.

Questions about Rohingya

Where is Rohingya spoken?

Rohingya is spoken in Myanmar, Bangladesh and Thailand. Unicode CLDR puts it at 1.7% of the population of Myanmar, which is about 977,961 people. On the map it is shown as a single point, because no open area map covers it.

How many people speak Rohingya?

Wikidata gives about 1.8 million speakers (Wikidata, with no source given, 2012). 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 Rohingya in?

Glottolog places Rohingya in the Indo-European family, in the branch Classical Indo-European, Indo-Iranian, Indo-Aryan, Middle-Modern Indo-Aryan, Continental Indo-Aryan, Indo-Aryan Eastern zone, Oriya-Gauda-Kamrupa, Gauda-Kamrupa and Gauda-Banga.

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