Where is Limburgan spoken?

Limburgan (Plat) is an Indo-European language, spoken in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. 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

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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 Limburgan is spoken

Limburgan is spoken in 3 countries: the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. 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
Netherlands5.5%977,482
BelgiumNot givenNot given
GermanyNot 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.

Limburgan 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 Limburgan?

Wikidata gives about 1.6 million 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 Limburgan sits in the language family tree

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

  1. Indo-European
  2. Classical Indo-European
  3. Germanic
  4. Northwest Germanic
  5. West Germanic
  6. High German
  7. Middle German
  8. West Middle German
  9. Middle Franconian
  10. Ripuarian
  11. Limburgan

Related languages

Other languages in the Ripuarian group:

More about Limburgan

Codes: ISO 639-3 lim, Glottolog limb1263. Glottolog macroarea: Eurasia.

Questions about Limburgan

Where is Limburgan spoken?

Limburgan is spoken in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. Unicode CLDR puts it at 5.5% of the population of Netherlands, which is about 977,482 people. On the map it is shown as a single point, because no open area map covers it.

How many people speak Limburgan?

Wikidata gives about 1.6 million 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 Limburgan in?

Glottolog places Limburgan in the Indo-European family, in the branch Classical Indo-European, Germanic, Northwest Germanic, West Germanic, High German, Middle German, West Middle German, Middle Franconian and Ripuarian.

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