World Language Map

Where is Fala spoken?

Fala is an Indo-European language, spoken in Portugal and Spain. 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 Fala is spoken

Fala is spoken in 2 countries: Portugal and Spain.

Country
Portugal
Spain

Fala 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 Fala?

Wikidata gives about 11,000 first-language speakers (ethnologue.com, 1994). 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 Fala sits in the language family tree

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

  1. Indo-European
  2. Classical Indo-European
  3. Italic
  4. Latino-Faliscan
  5. Latinic
  6. Imperial Latin
  7. Romance
  8. Italo-Western Romance
  9. Western Romance
  10. Shifted Western Romance
  11. Southwestern Shifted Romance
  12. West Ibero-Romance
  13. Galician Romance
  14. Fala

Related languages

Other languages in the Galician Romance group:

More about Fala

Codes: ISO 639-3 fax, Glottolog fala1241. Glottolog macroarea: Eurasia.

Fala is a Romance language, descended from Latin. Latin’s footprint: the Roman Empire at its height → Latin spread along Roman roads →

Questions about Fala

Where is Fala spoken?

Fala is spoken in Portugal and Spain. On the map it is shown as a single point, because no open area map covers it.

How many people speak Fala?

Wikidata gives about 11,000 first-language speakers (ethnologue.com, 1994). 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 Fala in?

Glottolog places Fala in the Indo-European family, in the branch Classical Indo-European, Italic, Latino-Faliscan, Latinic, Imperial Latin, Romance, Italo-Western Romance, Western Romance, Shifted Western Romance, Southwestern Shifted Romance, West Ibero-Romance and Galician Romance.

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