World Language Map

Where is West Uvean spoken?

West Uvean is an Austronesian language, spoken in New Caledonia. 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 Uvean is spoken

West Uvean is spoken in one country: New Caledonia.

Country
New Caledonia

On the map, West Uvean 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 Uvean.

How many people speak West Uvean?

Wikidata gives about 2,200 speakers (Wikidata, with no source given, 2009). 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 West Uvean sits in the language family tree

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

  1. Austronesian
  2. Malayo-Polynesian
  3. Eastern Malayo-Polynesian
  4. Oceanic
  5. Central Pacific linkage
  6. Tokalau Fijian
  7. Polynesian
  8. Nuclear Polynesian
  9. Vanuatu-Loyalty Outliers
  10. West Uvean

Related languages

Other languages in the Vanuatu-Loyalty Outliers group:

More about West Uvean

Codes: ISO 639-3 uve, Glottolog west2516. Glottolog macroarea: Papunesia.

Questions about West Uvean

Where is West Uvean spoken?

West Uvean is spoken in New Caledonia. On the map it is shown as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007.

How many people speak West Uvean?

Wikidata gives about 2,200 speakers (Wikidata, with no source given, 2009). 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 West Uvean in?

Glottolog places West Uvean in the Austronesian family, in the branch Malayo-Polynesian, Eastern Malayo-Polynesian, Oceanic, Central Pacific linkage, Tokalau Fijian, Polynesian, Nuclear Polynesian and Vanuatu-Loyalty Outliers.

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