World Language Map

Where is Bislama spoken?

Bislama is an Indo-European language, spoken in Vanuatu and New Caledonia. 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 Bislama is spoken

Bislama is spoken in 2 countries: Vanuatu and New Caledonia. 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
Vanuatu90%286,206
New CaledoniaNot 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.

Bislama 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 Bislama?

Wikidata gives about 10,000 speakers (Ethnologue, 2011). These figures are approximate: they come from different sources, years and definitions of a speaker.

Status: Not endangered. Glottolog lists it as not endangered: it is still being passed on to children.

Where Bislama sits in the language family tree

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

  1. Indo-European
  2. Classical Indo-European
  3. Germanic
  4. Northwest Germanic
  5. West Germanic
  6. North Sea Germanic
  7. Anglo-Frisian
  8. Anglic
  9. Later Anglic
  10. Middle-Modern English
  11. Macro-English
  12. Pacific Creole English
  13. Early Melanesian Pidgin
  14. Bislama

Related languages

Other languages in the Early Melanesian Pidgin group:

More about Bislama

Codes: ISO 639-3 bis, Glottolog bisl1239. Glottolog macroarea: Papunesia.

Questions about Bislama

Where is Bislama spoken?

Bislama is spoken in Vanuatu and New Caledonia. Unicode CLDR puts it at 90% of the population of Vanuatu, which is about 286,206 people. On the map it is shown as a single point, because no open area map covers it.

How many people speak Bislama?

Wikidata gives about 10,000 speakers (Ethnologue, 2011). 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 Bislama in?

Glottolog places Bislama in the Indo-European family, in the branch Classical Indo-European, Germanic, Northwest Germanic, West Germanic, North Sea Germanic, Anglo-Frisian, Anglic, Later Anglic, Middle-Modern English, Macro-English, Pacific Creole English and Early Melanesian Pidgin.

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