World Language Map

Where is Sango spoken?

Sango (Sängö) is an Atlantic-Congo language, spoken in the Central African Republic, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of the Congo. 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

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 Sango is spoken

Sango is spoken in 4 countries: the Central African Republic, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of the Congo. 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
Central African Republic49%2,768,970
ChadNot givenNot given
Democratic Republic of the CongoNot givenNot given
Republic of the CongoNot 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.

Sango 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 Sango?

Wikidata gives about 599,000 first-language speakers (Ethnologue, 2017). It also lists about 4.6 million second-language speakers (Ethnologue, 2017). 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 Sango sits in the language family tree

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

  1. Atlantic-Congo
  2. Volta-Congo
  3. North Volta-Congo
  4. Cameroun-Ubangian
  5. Ubangi
  6. Ngbandi-Mongoba-Kazibati
  7. Ngbandic
  8. Nuclear Ngbandic
  9. Sangoic
  10. Sango

Related languages

Other languages in the Sangoic group:

More about Sango

Codes: ISO 639-3 sag, Glottolog sang1328. Glottolog macroarea: Africa.

Questions about Sango

Where is Sango spoken?

Sango is spoken in the Central African Republic, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of the Congo. Unicode CLDR puts it at 49% of the population of Central African Republic, which is about 2,768,970 people. On the map it is shown as a single point, because no open area map covers it.

How many people speak Sango?

Wikidata gives about 599,000 first-language speakers (Ethnologue, 2017). Speaker numbers are approximate and differ between sources: counting who is a speaker, and whether to include second-language speakers, is not settled. It also lists about 4.6 million second-language speakers (Ethnologue, 2017).

Which language family is Sango in?

Glottolog places Sango in the Atlantic-Congo family, in the branch Volta-Congo, North Volta-Congo, Cameroun-Ubangian, Ubangi, Ngbandi-Mongoba-Kazibati, Ngbandic, Nuclear Ngbandic and Sangoic.

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