World Language Map

Where is Southern Altai spoken?

Southern Altai (алтайдыҥ тил) is a Turkic language, spoken in China, Kazakhstan, Mongolia and Russia. It is marked on the map by a ringed point.

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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 Southern Altai is spoken

Southern Altai is spoken in 4 countries: China, Kazakhstan, Mongolia and Russia.

Country
China
Kazakhstan
Mongolia
Russia

Southern Altai 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 Southern Altai?

Wikidata gives about 56,000 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 Southern Altai sits in the language family tree

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

  1. Turkic
  2. Common Turkic
  3. Kipchak-Turkestan
  4. Kipchak
  5. Southeast Kipchak
  6. East Kipchak
  7. Southern Altai

Related languages

Other languages in the East Kipchak group:

More about Southern Altai

Codes: ISO 639-3 alt, Glottolog sout2694. Glottolog macroarea: Eurasia.

Questions about Southern Altai

Where is Southern Altai spoken?

Southern Altai is spoken in China, Kazakhstan, Mongolia and Russia. On the map it is shown as a single point, because no open area map covers it.

How many people speak Southern Altai?

Wikidata gives about 56,000 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 Southern Altai in?

Glottolog places Southern Altai in the Turkic family, in the branch Common Turkic, Kipchak-Turkestan, Kipchak, Southeast Kipchak and East Kipchak.

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