World Language Map

Where is Sicilian spoken?

Sicilian (Sicilianu) is an Indo-European language, spoken in Italy. It is marked on the map by a ringed point.

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 Sicilian is spoken

Sicilian is spoken in one country: Italy. 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
Italy0.8%499,912

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.

Sicilian 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 Sicilian?

Wikidata gives about 4.7 million first-language speakers (Wikidata, with no source given, 2002). These figures are approximate: they come from different sources, years and definitions of a speaker.

Status: Threatened. Glottolog lists it as threatened: it is still spoken by all generations, but there are signs that the number of speakers is falling.

Where Sicilian sits in the language family tree

Glottolog classifies Sicilian 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. Italo-Dalmatian
  10. Italian Romance
  11. Southern Italian Romance
  12. Sicilian

Related languages

Other languages in the Southern Italian Romance group:

More about Sicilian

Codes: ISO 639-3 scn, Glottolog sici1248. Glottolog macroarea: Eurasia.

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

Questions about Sicilian

Where is Sicilian spoken?

Sicilian is spoken in Italy. Unicode CLDR puts it at 0.8% of the population of Italy, which is about 499,912 people. On the map it is shown as a single point, because no open area map covers it.

How many people speak Sicilian?

Wikidata gives about 4.7 million first-language speakers (Wikidata, with no source given, 2002). 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 Sicilian in?

Glottolog places Sicilian in the Indo-European family, in the branch Classical Indo-European, Italic, Latino-Faliscan, Latinic, Imperial Latin, Romance, Italo-Western Romance, Italo-Dalmatian, Italian Romance and Southern Italian Romance.

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.