World Language Map

Where is Gwich'in spoken?

Gwich'in (Dinju Zhuh Kʼyuu) is an Athabaskan-Eyak-Tlingit language, spoken in Canada and the United States. 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 Gwich'in is spoken

Gwich'in is spoken in 2 countries: Canada and the United States.

Country
Canada
United States

On the map, Gwich'in 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 Gwich'in.

How many people speak Gwich'in?

Wikidata gives about 670 speakers (Wikidata, with no source given). These figures are approximate: they come from different sources, years and definitions of a speaker.

Status: Moribund. Glottolog lists it as moribund: the youngest speakers are middle-aged or older, and children are no longer learning it.

Where Gwich'in sits in the language family tree

Glottolog classifies Gwich'in as follows, from the largest family down to the language itself.

  1. Athabaskan-Eyak-Tlingit
  2. Athabaskan-Eyak
  3. Athabaskan
  4. Central Alaska-Yukon Athabaskan
  5. Gwichin-Han
  6. Gwich'in

Related languages

Other languages in the Gwichin-Han group:

  • Han (19 speakers)

More about Gwich'in

Codes: ISO 639-3 gwi, Glottolog gwic1235. Glottolog macroarea: North America.

Questions about Gwich'in

Where is Gwich'in spoken?

Gwich'in is spoken in Canada and the United States. On the map it is shown as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007.

How many people speak Gwich'in?

Wikidata gives about 670 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 Gwich'in in?

Glottolog places Gwich'in in the Athabaskan-Eyak-Tlingit family, in the branch Athabaskan-Eyak, Athabaskan, Central Alaska-Yukon Athabaskan and Gwichin-Han.

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