World Language Map

Where is South-Central Koongo spoken?

South-Central Koongo is an Atlantic-Congo language, spoken in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Angola and the Republic of the Congo. The outlined area on the map shows where.

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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 South-Central Koongo is spoken

South-Central Koongo is spoken in 3 countries: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Angola and the Republic of the Congo. 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
Democratic Republic of the Congo1.5%1,731,045
AngolaNot givenNot given
Republic of the CongoNot 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, South-Central Koongo 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 South-Central Koongo.

How many people speak South-Central Koongo?

Wikidata holds no speaker count for this language. The table above has rough per-country estimates from Unicode CLDR.

Status: Not endangered. Glottolog lists it as not endangered: it is still being passed on to children.

Where South-Central Koongo sits in the language family tree

Glottolog classifies South-Central Koongo as follows, from the largest family down to the language itself.

  1. Atlantic-Congo
  2. Volta-Congo
  3. Benue-Congo
  4. Bantoid
  5. Southern Bantoid
  6. Narrow Bantu
  7. Central-Western Bantu
  8. West-Coastal Bantu
  9. Nzadic
  10. Lweric
  11. Dingic
  12. Loange-Atlantic
  13. KLC Extended
  14. Kikongo Language Cluster
  15. Nuclear KLC
  16. Kikongoic
  17. Kambakunyic Kikongo
  18. Kilaadic Kikongo
  19. Central-Southern Kikongo
  20. Southeastern Kikongo
  21. Southern Kikongo
  22. Koongo-Kituba
  23. South-Central Koongo

Related languages

Other languages in the Koongo-Kituba group:

More about South-Central Koongo

Codes: ISO 639-3 kng, Glottolog koon1244. Glottolog macroarea: Africa.

Questions about South-Central Koongo

Where is South-Central Koongo spoken?

South-Central Koongo is spoken in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Angola and the Republic of the Congo. Unicode CLDR puts it at 1.5% of the population of Democratic Republic of the Congo, which is about 1,731,045 people. On the map it is shown as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007.

Which language family is South-Central Koongo in?

Glottolog places South-Central Koongo in the Atlantic-Congo family, in the branch Volta-Congo, Benue-Congo, Bantoid, Southern Bantoid, Narrow Bantu, Central-Western Bantu, West-Coastal Bantu, Nzadic, Lweric, Dingic, Loange-Atlantic, KLC Extended, Kikongo Language Cluster, Nuclear KLC, Kikongoic, Kambakunyic Kikongo, Kilaadic Kikongo, Central-Southern Kikongo, Southeastern Kikongo, Southern Kikongo and Koongo-Kituba.

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