World Language Map

Where is Central Wambo spoken?

Central Wambo is an Atlantic-Congo language, spoken in Angola and Namibia. 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 Central Wambo is spoken

Central Wambo is spoken in 2 countries: Angola and Namibia.

Country
Angola
Namibia

On the map, Central Wambo 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 Central Wambo.

How many people speak Central Wambo?

Wikidata gives about 200 speakers (Ethnologue, 2006). 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 Central Wambo sits in the language family tree

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

  1. Atlantic-Congo
  2. Volta-Congo
  3. Benue-Congo
  4. Bantoid
  5. Southern Bantoid
  6. Narrow Bantu
  7. Central-Western Bantu
  8. Njila
  9. Southern Njila
  10. Kunene
  11. Cimbebasia
  12. Ndonga (R.20)
  13. Central Wambo

Related languages

Other languages in the Ndonga (R.20) group:

More about Central Wambo

Codes: ISO 639-3 lnb, Glottolog mbal1255. Glottolog macroarea: Africa.

Questions about Central Wambo

Where is Central Wambo spoken?

Central Wambo is spoken in Angola and Namibia. On the map it is shown as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007.

How many people speak Central Wambo?

Wikidata gives about 200 speakers (Ethnologue, 2006). 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 Central Wambo in?

Glottolog places Central Wambo in the Atlantic-Congo family, in the branch Volta-Congo, Benue-Congo, Bantoid, Southern Bantoid, Narrow Bantu, Central-Western Bantu, Njila, Southern Njila, Kunene, Cimbebasia and Ndonga (R.20).

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