Where Tuvalu is spoken
Tuvalu is spoken in 5 countries: Tuvalu, Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru and 1 more. The table gives the share of each country’s people who speak it, from Unicode CLDR, where CLDR has a figure.
| Country | Share of population | Estimated speakers |
|---|---|---|
| Tuvalu | 85% | 9,973 |
| Fiji | Not given | Not given |
| Kiribati | Not given | Not given |
| Nauru | Not given | Not given |
| New Zealand | Not given | Not 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, Tuvalu 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 Tuvalu.
How many people speak Tuvalu?
Wikidata gives about 13,000 speakers (Wikidata, with no source given). 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 Tuvalu sits in the language family tree
Glottolog classifies Tuvalu as follows, from the largest family down to the language itself.
- Austronesian
- Malayo-Polynesian
- Eastern Malayo-Polynesian
- Oceanic
- Central Pacific linkage
- Tokalau Fijian
- Polynesian
- Nuclear Polynesian
- Ellicean
- Tuvalu
More about Tuvalu
- Read about Tuvalu on Wikipedia
- Austronesian languages map
- Languages spoken in Tuvalu
- All languages, A to Z
Codes: ISO 639-3 tvl, Glottolog tuva1244. Glottolog macroarea: Papunesia.
Questions about Tuvalu
Where is Tuvalu spoken?
Tuvalu is spoken in Tuvalu, Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru and 1 more. Unicode CLDR puts it at 85% of the population of Tuvalu, which is about 9,973 people. On the map it is shown as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007.
How many people speak Tuvalu?
Wikidata gives about 13,000 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 Tuvalu in?
Glottolog places Tuvalu in the Austronesian family, in the branch Malayo-Polynesian, Eastern Malayo-Polynesian, Oceanic, Central Pacific linkage, Tokalau Fijian, Polynesian, Nuclear Polynesian and Ellicean.