World Language Map

Where is Yonaguni spoken?

Yonaguni (ドゥナンムヌイ) is a Japonic language, spoken in Japan. 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

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  • 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 Yonaguni is spoken

Yonaguni is spoken in one country: Japan.

Country
Japan

Yonaguni 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 Yonaguni?

Wikidata gives about 400 speakers (degruyter.com, 2015). These figures are approximate: they come from different sources, years and definitions of a speaker.

Status: Moribund. Glottolog lists it as moribund: the youngest speakers are middle-aged or older, and children are no longer learning it.

Where Yonaguni sits in the language family tree

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

  1. Japonic
  2. Ryukyuan
  3. Southern Ryukyu
  4. Macro-Yaeyama
  5. Yonaguni

Related languages

Other languages in the Macro-Yaeyama group:

More about Yonaguni

Codes: ISO 639-3 yoi, Glottolog yona1241. Glottolog macroarea: Eurasia.

Questions about Yonaguni

Where is Yonaguni spoken?

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

How many people speak Yonaguni?

Wikidata gives about 400 speakers (degruyter.com, 2015). 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 Yonaguni in?

Glottolog places Yonaguni in the Japonic family, in the branch Ryukyuan, Southern Ryukyu and Macro-Yaeyama.

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