World Language Map

Where is Kven Finnish spoken?

Kven Finnish (kvääni) is an Uralic language, spoken in Finland, Norway and Russia. It is marked on the map by a ringed point.

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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 Kven Finnish is spoken

Kven Finnish is spoken in 3 countries: Finland, Norway and Russia.

Country
Finland
Norway
Russia

Kven Finnish 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 Kven Finnish?

Wikidata gives about 2,000 speakers (Wikidata, with no source given, 2005). 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 Kven Finnish sits in the language family tree

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

  1. Uralic
  2. Finnic
  3. Coastal Finnic
  4. Neva
  5. North Finnic
  6. Nuclear Finnish
  7. Kven Finnish

Related languages

Other languages in the Nuclear Finnish group:

More about Kven Finnish

Codes: ISO 639-3 fkv, Glottolog kven1236. Glottolog macroarea: Eurasia.

Questions about Kven Finnish

Where is Kven Finnish spoken?

Kven Finnish is spoken in Finland, Norway and Russia. On the map it is shown as a single point, because no open area map covers it.

How many people speak Kven Finnish?

Wikidata gives about 2,000 speakers (Wikidata, with no source given, 2005). 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 Kven Finnish in?

Glottolog places Kven Finnish in the Uralic family, in the branch Finnic, Coastal Finnic, Neva, North Finnic and Nuclear Finnish.

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