World Language Map

Indo-European languages map

485 Indo-European languages are on the map, most of them in India, Pakistan and Iran. It divides into 8 main branches, the largest being Indo-Iranian (293 languages). The best-known members include Spanish, English and Hindi. Only this family is drawn; tap the map to list every language at a spot.

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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.

The Indo-European family at a glance

  • 485languages
  • 173drawn as areas
  • 312shown as points
  • 8main branches

Colours on the map mark the ten largest families; this page’s filter shows Indo-European alone. Areas are generalisations from published atlases and overlap with the areas of other families.

Biggest Indo-European languages

By approximate speaker counts from Wikidata, each with its source and year on its own page.

  1. Where is Spanish spoken? (about 485 million speakers)
  2. Where is English spoken? (about 379 million speakers)
  3. Where is Hindi spoken? (about 341 million speakers)
  4. Where is Bengali spoken? (about 300 million speakers)
  5. Where is Portuguese spoken? (about 254.3 million speakers)
  6. Where is Russian spoken? (about 154 million speakers)
  7. Where is Marathi spoken? (about 83.1 million speakers)
  8. Where is French spoken? (about 77.2 million speakers)
  9. Where is German spoken? (about 76.5 million speakers)
  10. Where is Urdu spoken? (about 68.6 million speakers)

Branches of Indo-European

The second level of the Glottolog family tree.

  • Indo-Iranian (293)
  • Germanic (86)
  • Italic (69)
  • Balto-Slavic (19)
  • Graeco-Phrygian (7)
  • Celtic (5)
  • Albanian (4)
  • Armenic (2)

Where Indo-European languages are spoken

Countries with the most Indo-European languages, with the number of languages in brackets.

The Romance languages, such as Spanish, French and Italian, descend from Latin. Latin’s footprint: the Roman Empire at its height → Latin spread along Roman roads →

All 485 Indo-European languages, A to Z

Questions about Indo-European languages

How many Indo-European languages are there?

485 living Indo-European languages are on this map, in the Glottolog classification. They fall into 8 main branches, the biggest being Indo-Iranian (293 languages). Other classifications group languages differently, so totals vary.

Where are Indo-European languages spoken?

India (148), Pakistan (72), Iran (62), Italy (40), Afghanistan (36) and Germany (36) have the most Indo-European languages, with the number of languages in brackets.

What are the biggest Indo-European languages?

By the approximate speaker counts Wikidata holds: Spanish (about 485 million), English (about 379 million) and Hindi (about 341 million). These figures differ between sources and years.

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