World Language Map

Where is Mossi spoken?

Mossi (mòoré) is an Atlantic-Congo language, spoken in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Mali and 1 more. The outlined area on the map shows where.

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The filter only changes what is drawn. Tap the map to list every language at a spot, whichever family is shown. You can also pick any family from its own page.

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 Mossi is spoken

Mossi is spoken in 5 countries: Burkina Faso, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Mali and 1 more. 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
Burkina Faso40%9,216,880
GhanaNot givenNot given
Ivory CoastNot givenNot given
MaliNot givenNot given
TogoNot 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.

On the map, Mossi 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 Mossi.

How many people speak Mossi?

Wikidata gives about 7.6 million first-language speakers (Nationalencyklopedin, 2007). 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 Mossi sits in the language family tree

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

  1. Atlantic-Congo
  2. Volta-Congo
  3. North Volta-Congo
  4. Gur
  5. Central Gur
  6. Northern Central Gur
  7. Bwamu-Oti-Volta
  8. Oti-Volta
  9. Nuclear Oti-Volta
  10. Gurma-Yom-Oti-Volta Occidental
  11. Oti-Volta Occidental
  12. Nuclear Oti-Volta Occidental
  13. Northwest Oti-Volta
  14. Mossi-Farefare
  15. Mossic
  16. Mossi

Related languages

Other languages in the Mossic group:

More about Mossi

Codes: ISO 639-3 mos, Glottolog moss1236. Glottolog macroarea: Africa.

Questions about Mossi

Where is Mossi spoken?

Mossi is spoken in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Mali and 1 more. Unicode CLDR puts it at 40% of the population of Burkina Faso, which is about 9,216,880 people. On the map it is shown as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007.

How many people speak Mossi?

Wikidata gives about 7.6 million first-language speakers (Nationalencyklopedin, 2007). 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 Mossi in?

Glottolog places Mossi in the Atlantic-Congo family, in the branch Volta-Congo, North Volta-Congo, Gur, Central Gur, Northern Central Gur, Bwamu-Oti-Volta, Oti-Volta, Nuclear Oti-Volta, Gurma-Yom-Oti-Volta Occidental, Oti-Volta Occidental, Nuclear Oti-Volta Occidental, Northwest Oti-Volta, Mossi-Farefare and Mossic.

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