Skip to content

Lakes Plain languages map

19 Lakes Plain languages are on the map, most of them in Indonesia. It divides into 3 main branches, the largest being Tariku (15 languages). The best-known members include Rasawa and Taworta. Only this family is drawn; tap the map to list every language at a spot.

Tap or scroll to load the interactive map

Search for a language or a town

Show language family

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 Lakes Plain family at a glance

19languages
10drawn as areas
9shown as points
3main branches

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

Biggest Lakes Plain languages

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

Where is Rasawa spoken? (about 200 speakers)
Where is Taworta spoken? (about 140 speakers)

Branches of Lakes Plain

The second level of the Glottolog family tree.

Tariku (15)
East Lakes Plain (2)
Far West Lakes Plain (2)

Where Lakes Plain languages are spoken

Countries with the most Lakes Plain languages, with the number of languages in brackets.

Indonesia (19)

All 19 Lakes Plain languages, A to Z

Questions about Lakes Plain languages

How many Lakes Plain languages are there?

19 living Lakes Plain languages are on this map, in the Glottolog classification. They fall into 3 main branches, the biggest being Tariku (15 languages). Other classifications group languages differently, so totals vary.

Where are Lakes Plain languages spoken?

Indonesia (19) have the most Lakes Plain languages, with the number of languages in brackets.