World Language Map

Where is Tamasheq spoken?

Tamasheq (ⵜⵎⴰⵂⵈ) is an Afro-Asiatic language, spoken in Burkina Faso and Mali. 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 Tamasheq is spoken

Tamasheq is spoken in 2 countries: Burkina Faso and Mali.

Country
Burkina Faso
Mali

Tamasheq 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 Tamasheq?

Wikidata gives about 500,000 first-language speakers (Ethnologue: Languages of the World, 18th Edition, 2023). 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 Tamasheq sits in the language family tree

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

  1. Afro-Asiatic
  2. Berber
  3. Tuareg
  4. Southern Tuareg
  5. Tamasheq

Related languages

Other languages in the Southern Tuareg group:

More about Tamasheq

Codes: ISO 639-3 taq, Glottolog tama1365. Glottolog macroarea: Africa.

Questions about Tamasheq

Where is Tamasheq spoken?

Tamasheq is spoken in Burkina Faso and Mali. On the map it is shown as a single point, because no open area map covers it.

How many people speak Tamasheq?

Wikidata gives about 500,000 first-language speakers (Ethnologue: Languages of the World, 18th Edition, 2023). 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 Tamasheq in?

Glottolog places Tamasheq in the Afro-Asiatic family, in the branch Berber, Tuareg and Southern Tuareg.

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