World Language Map

Where is Sãotomense spoken?

Sãotomense is an Indo-European language, spoken in São Tomé and Príncipe. It is marked on the map by a ringed point.

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  • Afro-Asiatic
  • Nuclear Trans New Guinea
  • Otomanguean
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  • 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 Sãotomense is spoken

Sãotomense is spoken in one country: São Tomé and Príncipe.

Country
São Tomé and Príncipe

Sãotomense 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 Sãotomense?

Wikidata gives about 70,000 speakers (Wikidata, with no source given). These figures are approximate: they come from different sources, years and definitions of a speaker.

Status: Shifting. Glottolog lists it as shifting: the youngest speakers are adults, and children are growing up speaking another language.

Where Sãotomense sits in the language family tree

Glottolog classifies Sãotomense 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. Southwestern Shifted Romance
  12. West Ibero-Romance
  13. Galician Romance
  14. Macro-Portuguese
  15. Gulf Guinea Creole Portuguese
  16. Bantu Layer Gulf Guinea Creole Portuguese
  17. Saotomic
  18. Sãotomense

Related languages

Other languages in the Saotomic group:

More about Sãotomense

Codes: ISO 639-3 cri, Glottolog saot1239. Glottolog macroarea: Africa.

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

Questions about Sãotomense

Where is Sãotomense spoken?

Sãotomense is spoken in São Tomé and Príncipe. On the map it is shown as a single point, because no open area map covers it.

How many people speak Sãotomense?

Wikidata gives about 70,000 speakers (Wikidata, with no source given). 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 Sãotomense in?

Glottolog places Sãotomense 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, Southwestern Shifted Romance, West Ibero-Romance, Galician Romance, Macro-Portuguese, Gulf Guinea Creole Portuguese, Bantu Layer Gulf Guinea Creole Portuguese and Saotomic.

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