World Language Map

Where is Garifuna spoken?

Garifuna (Karif) is an Arawakan language, spoken in Honduras, Belize, Guatemala and Nicaragua. 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 Garifuna is spoken

Garifuna is spoken in 4 countries: Honduras, Belize, Guatemala and Nicaragua. 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
Honduras0.5%44,787
Belize1.9%7,900
GuatemalaNot givenNot given
NicaraguaNot 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.

Garifuna 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 Garifuna?

Wikidata gives about 190,000 speakers (Wikidata, with no source given). 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 Garifuna sits in the language family tree

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

  1. Arawakan
  2. Caribbean Arawakan
  3. Antillean Arawakan
  4. Ineric
  5. Island Carib-Garifuna
  6. Garifuna

More about Garifuna

Codes: ISO 639-3 cab, Glottolog gari1256. Glottolog macroarea: North America.

Questions about Garifuna

Where is Garifuna spoken?

Garifuna is spoken in Honduras, Belize, Guatemala and Nicaragua. Unicode CLDR puts it at 0.5% of the population of Honduras, which is about 44,787 people. On the map it is shown as a single point, because no open area map covers it.

How many people speak Garifuna?

Wikidata gives about 190,000 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 Garifuna in?

Glottolog places Garifuna in the Arawakan family, in the branch Caribbean Arawakan, Antillean Arawakan, Ineric and Island Carib-Garifuna.

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