World Language Map

Where is Wab spoken?

Wab is an Austronesian language, spoken in Papua New Guinea. 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 Wab is spoken

Wab is spoken in one country: Papua New Guinea.

Country
Papua New Guinea

On the map, Wab 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 Wab.

How many people speak Wab?

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 Wab sits in the language family tree

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

  1. Austronesian
  2. Malayo-Polynesian
  3. Eastern Malayo-Polynesian
  4. Oceanic
  5. Western Oceanic linkage
  6. North New Guinea linkage
  7. Ngero-Vitiaz linkage
  8. Vitiaz linkage
  9. Bel-Roinji-Nenaya
  10. Bel
  11. Eastern Bel
  12. Wab

Related languages

Other languages in the Eastern Bel group:

More about Wab

Codes: ISO 639-3 wab, Glottolog wabb1237. Glottolog macroarea: Papunesia.

Questions about Wab

Where is Wab spoken?

Wab is spoken in Papua New Guinea. On the map it is shown as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007.

Which language family is Wab in?

Glottolog places Wab in the Austronesian family, in the branch Malayo-Polynesian, Eastern Malayo-Polynesian, Oceanic, Western Oceanic linkage, North New Guinea linkage, Ngero-Vitiaz linkage, Vitiaz linkage, Bel-Roinji-Nenaya, Bel and Eastern Bel.

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