World Language Map

Where is Carolinian spoken?

Carolinian (Refaluwasch) is an Austronesian language, spoken in the Northern Mariana Islands. The outlined area on the map shows where.

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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 Carolinian is spoken

Carolinian is spoken in one country: the Northern Mariana Islands.

Country
Northern Mariana Islands

On the map, Carolinian is drawn as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007. The area was digitised by the Glottography project (doi:10.5281/zenodo.18613195), and the atlas is cited on the data sources page. Language areas are generalisations, and cities and borderlands are multilingual, so the outline does not mean that everyone inside it speaks Carolinian.

How many people speak Carolinian?

Wikidata gives about 5,700 speakers (Wikidata, with no source given). These figures are approximate: they come from different sources, years and definitions of a speaker.

Status: Shifting. Glottolog lists it as shifting: the youngest speakers are adults, and children are growing up speaking another language.

Where Carolinian sits in the language family tree

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

  1. Austronesian
  2. Malayo-Polynesian
  3. Eastern Malayo-Polynesian
  4. Oceanic
  5. Micronesian
  6. Central Micronesian
  7. Western Micronesian
  8. Chuukic-Ponapeic
  9. Trukic
  10. Nuclear Trukic
  11. Central Trukic
  12. Satawalese-Carolinian
  13. Macro-Carolinian
  14. Carolinian

Related languages

Other languages in the Macro-Carolinian group:

More about Carolinian

Codes: ISO 639-3 cal, Glottolog caro1242. Glottolog macroarea: Papunesia.

Questions about Carolinian

Where is Carolinian spoken?

Carolinian is spoken in the Northern Mariana Islands. On the map it is shown as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007.

How many people speak Carolinian?

Wikidata gives about 5,700 speakers (Wikidata, with no source given). 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 Carolinian in?

Glottolog places Carolinian in the Austronesian family, in the branch Malayo-Polynesian, Eastern Malayo-Polynesian, Oceanic, Micronesian, Central Micronesian, Western Micronesian, Chuukic-Ponapeic, Trukic, Nuclear Trukic, Central Trukic, Satawalese-Carolinian and Macro-Carolinian.

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