World Language Map

Where is West Ambae spoken?

West Ambae is an Austronesian language, spoken in Vanuatu. 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 West Ambae is spoken

West Ambae is spoken in one country: Vanuatu.

Country
Vanuatu

On the map, West Ambae 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 West Ambae.

How many people speak West Ambae?

Wikidata holds no speaker count for this language.

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

Where West Ambae sits in the language family tree

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

  1. Austronesian
  2. Malayo-Polynesian
  3. Eastern Malayo-Polynesian
  4. Oceanic
  5. North and Central Vanuatu
  6. Northern Vanuatu
  7. Ambae
  8. West Ambae

Related languages

Other languages in the Ambae group:

More about West Ambae

Codes: ISO 639-3 nnd, Glottolog west2513. Glottolog macroarea: Papunesia.

Questions about West Ambae

Where is West Ambae spoken?

West Ambae is spoken in Vanuatu. On the map it is shown as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007.

Which language family is West Ambae in?

Glottolog places West Ambae in the Austronesian family, in the branch Malayo-Polynesian, Eastern Malayo-Polynesian, Oceanic, North and Central Vanuatu, Northern Vanuatu and Ambae.

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