World Language Map

Where is Sila spoken?

Sila is a Sino-Tibetan language, spoken in China, Laos and Vietnam. The outlined area on the map shows where.

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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 Sila is spoken

Sila is spoken in 3 countries: China, Laos and Vietnam.

Country
China
Laos
Vietnam

On the map, Sila 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 Sila.

How many people speak Sila?

Wikidata holds no speaker count for this language.

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

Where Sila sits in the language family tree

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

  1. Sino-Tibetan
  2. Burmo-Qiangic
  3. Lolo-Burmese
  4. Loloish
  5. Hani-Jino
  6. Bisoid-Hanic
  7. Sila-Wanya-Cosao-Pana
  8. Sila

Related languages

Other languages in the Sila-Wanya-Cosao-Pana group:

More about Sila

Codes: ISO 639-3 slt, Glottolog sila1247. Glottolog macroarea: Eurasia.

Questions about Sila

Where is Sila spoken?

Sila is spoken in China, Laos and Vietnam. On the map it is shown as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007.

Which language family is Sila in?

Glottolog places Sila in the Sino-Tibetan family, in the branch Burmo-Qiangic, Lolo-Burmese, Loloish, Hani-Jino, Bisoid-Hanic and Sila-Wanya-Cosao-Pana.

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