World Language Map

Where is Kaqchikel spoken?

Kaqchikel (Kaqchikel Chʼabʼäl) is a Mayan language, spoken in Guatemala. It is marked on the map by a ringed point.

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Language families (largest ten)

  • Atlantic-Congo
  • Austronesian
  • Sino-Tibetan
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  • 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 Kaqchikel is spoken

Kaqchikel is spoken in one country: Guatemala. 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
Guatemala8.8%1,606,458

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.

Kaqchikel 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 Kaqchikel?

Wikidata gives about 500,000 speakers (Wikidata, with no source given). These figures are approximate: they come from different sources, years and definitions of a speaker.

Status: Threatened. Glottolog lists it as threatened: it is still spoken by all generations, but there are signs that the number of speakers is falling.

Where Kaqchikel sits in the language family tree

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

  1. Mayan
  2. Core Mayan
  3. Quichean-Mamean
  4. Greater Quichean
  5. Core Quichean
  6. Cakchiquel-Tzutujil
  7. Kaqchikelic
  8. Kaqchikel

Related languages

Other languages in the Kaqchikelic group:

More about Kaqchikel

Codes: ISO 639-3 cak, Glottolog kaqc1270. Glottolog macroarea: North America.

Questions about Kaqchikel

Where is Kaqchikel spoken?

Kaqchikel is spoken in Guatemala. Unicode CLDR puts it at 8.8% of the population of Guatemala, which is about 1,606,458 people. On the map it is shown as a single point, because no open area map covers it.

How many people speak Kaqchikel?

Wikidata gives about 500,000 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 Kaqchikel in?

Glottolog places Kaqchikel in the Mayan family, in the branch Core Mayan, Quichean-Mamean, Greater Quichean, Core Quichean, Cakchiquel-Tzutujil and Kaqchikelic.

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