World Language Map

Where is Shan spoken?

Shan (လိၵ်ႈတႆး) is a Tai-Kadai language, spoken in Myanmar, China and Thailand. The outlined area on the map shows where.

Tap or scroll to load the interactive map

The filter only changes what is drawn. Tap the map to list every language at a spot, whichever family is shown. You can also pick any family from its own page.

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 Shan is spoken

Shan is spoken in 3 countries: Myanmar, China 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
Myanmar6.4%3,681,734
ChinaNot givenNot given
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.

On the map, Shan 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 Shan.

How many people speak Shan?

Wikidata gives about 3 million speakers (Wikidata, with no source given). 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 Shan sits in the language family tree

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

  1. Tai-Kadai
  2. Kam-Tai
  3. Daic-Beic
  4. Daic
  5. Central-Southwestern Tai
  6. Wenma-Southwestern Tai
  7. Sapa-Southwestern Tai
  8. Southwestern Tai
  9. Southwestern Tai P
  10. Shanic
  11. Southern Shanic
  12. Shan

More about Shan

Codes: ISO 639-3 shn, Glottolog shan1277. Glottolog macroarea: Eurasia.

Questions about Shan

Where is Shan spoken?

Shan is spoken in Myanmar, China and Thailand. Unicode CLDR puts it at 6.4% of the population of Myanmar, which is about 3,681,734 people. On the map it is shown as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007.

How many people speak Shan?

Wikidata gives about 3 million 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 Shan in?

Glottolog places Shan in the Tai-Kadai family, in the branch Kam-Tai, Daic-Beic, Daic, Central-Southwestern Tai, Wenma-Southwestern Tai, Sapa-Southwestern Tai, Southwestern Tai, Southwestern Tai P, Shanic and Southern Shanic.

Embed this map

Copy this code into your web page. It is free to use. Please keep the link under the map, as it is how people find where the map comes from.