World Language Map

Where is Wayu spoken?

Wayu is a Sino-Tibetan language, spoken in Nepal. It is marked on the map by a ringed point.

Tap or scroll to load the interactive map

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 Wayu is spoken

Wayu is spoken in one country: Nepal.

Country
Nepal

Wayu 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 Wayu?

Wikidata gives about 1,500 first-language speakers (ethnologue.com, 2011). 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 Wayu sits in the language family tree

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

  1. Sino-Tibetan
  2. Himalayish
  3. Mahakiranti
  4. Kiranti
  5. Northwestern Kiranti
  6. Wayu

More about Wayu

Codes: ISO 639-3 vay, Glottolog wayu1241. Glottolog macroarea: Eurasia.

Questions about Wayu

Where is Wayu spoken?

Wayu is spoken in Nepal. On the map it is shown as a single point, because no open area map covers it.

How many people speak Wayu?

Wikidata gives about 1,500 first-language speakers (ethnologue.com, 2011). 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 Wayu in?

Glottolog places Wayu in the Sino-Tibetan family, in the branch Himalayish, Mahakiranti, Kiranti and Northwestern Kiranti.

Embed this map

Copy this code into your web page. It is free to use. Please keep the link under the map, as it is how people find where the map comes from.