World Language Map

Where is Phuan spoken?

Phuan is a Tai-Kadai language, spoken in Laos and Thailand. 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 Phuan is spoken

Phuan is spoken in 2 countries: Laos and Thailand.

Country
Laos
Thailand

On the map, Phuan 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 Phuan.

How many people speak Phuan?

Wikidata holds no speaker count for this language.

Status: Shifting. Glottolog lists it as shifting: the youngest speakers are adults, and children are growing up speaking another language.

Where Phuan sits in the language family tree

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

  1. Tai-Kadai
  2. Kam-Tai
  3. Daic-Beic
  4. Daic
  5. Central-Southwestern Tai
  6. Wenma-Southwestern Tai
  7. Sapa-Southwestern Tai
  8. Southwestern Tai
  9. Southwestern Thai PH
  10. Siamese
  11. Phuan

Related languages

Other languages in the Siamese group:

More about Phuan

Codes: ISO 639-3 phu, Glottolog phua1239. Glottolog macroarea: Eurasia.

Questions about Phuan

Where is Phuan spoken?

Phuan is spoken in Laos and Thailand. On the map it is shown as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007.

Which language family is Phuan in?

Glottolog places Phuan in the Tai-Kadai family, in the branch Kam-Tai, Daic-Beic, Daic, Central-Southwestern Tai, Wenma-Southwestern Tai, Sapa-Southwestern Tai, Southwestern Tai, Southwestern Thai PH and Siamese.

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