World Language Map

Where is Southern Birifor spoken?

Southern Birifor is an Atlantic-Congo language, spoken in Burkina Faso, Ghana and Ivory Coast. The outlined area on the map shows where.

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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 Southern Birifor is spoken

Southern Birifor is spoken in 3 countries: Burkina Faso, Ghana and Ivory Coast.

Country
Burkina Faso
Ghana
Ivory Coast

On the map, Southern Birifor 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 Southern Birifor.

How many people speak Southern Birifor?

Wikidata holds no speaker count for this language.

Status: Not endangered. Glottolog lists it as not endangered: it is still being passed on to children.

Where Southern Birifor sits in the language family tree

Glottolog classifies Southern Birifor 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. Safaliba-Dagaare
  15. Dagaaric
  16. North-West Dagaric
  17. Birifor
  18. Southern Birifor

Related languages

Other languages in the Birifor group:

More about Southern Birifor

Codes: ISO 639-3 biv, Glottolog sout2790. Glottolog macroarea: Africa.

Questions about Southern Birifor

Where is Southern Birifor spoken?

Southern Birifor is spoken in Burkina Faso, Ghana and Ivory Coast. On the map it is shown as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007.

Which language family is Southern Birifor in?

Glottolog places Southern Birifor 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, Safaliba-Dagaare, Dagaaric, North-West Dagaric and Birifor.

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