World Language Map

Where is Western Cham spoken?

Western Cham is an Austronesian language, spoken in Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam. It is marked on the map by a ringed point.

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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 Western Cham is spoken

Western Cham is spoken in 3 countries: Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam. The table gives the share of each country’s people who speak it, from Unicode CLDR, where CLDR has a figure.

CountryShare of populationEstimated speakers
Cambodia1.6%273,019
ThailandNot givenNot given
VietnamNot givenNot 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.

Western Cham 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 Western Cham?

Wikidata holds no speaker count for this language. The table above has rough per-country estimates from Unicode CLDR.

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 Western Cham sits in the language family tree

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

  1. Austronesian
  2. Malayo-Polynesian
  3. Malayo-Chamic
  4. Aceh-Chamic
  5. Chamic
  6. Cham
  7. Western Cham

Related languages

Other languages in the Cham group:

More about Western Cham

Codes: ISO 639-3 cja, Glottolog west2650. Glottolog macroarea: Eurasia.

Questions about Western Cham

Where is Western Cham spoken?

Western Cham is spoken in Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam. Unicode CLDR puts it at 1.6% of the population of Cambodia, which is about 273,019 people. On the map it is shown as a single point, because no open area map covers it.

Which language family is Western Cham in?

Glottolog places Western Cham in the Austronesian family, in the branch Malayo-Polynesian, Malayo-Chamic, Aceh-Chamic, Chamic and Cham.

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