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Koman languages map

5 Koman languages are on the map, most of them in Ethiopia, South Sudan and Sudan. The best-known members include Komo (Sudan-Ethiopia) and Gwama. 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 Koman family at a glance

5languages
3drawn as areas
2shown as points

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

Biggest Koman languages

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

Where is Komo (Sudan-Ethiopia) spoken? (about 19,000 speakers)
Where is Gwama spoken? (about 319 speakers)

Where Koman languages are spoken

Countries with the most Koman languages, with the number of languages in brackets.

All 5 Koman languages, A to Z

Questions about Koman languages

How many Koman languages are there?

5 living Koman languages are on this map, in the Glottolog classification. Other classifications group languages differently, so totals vary.

Where are Koman languages spoken?

Ethiopia (4), South Sudan (4) and Sudan (2) have the most Koman languages, with the number of languages in brackets.