Where Tok Pisin is spoken
Tok Pisin is spoken in one country: Papua New Guinea. The table gives the share of each country’s people who speak it, from Unicode CLDR, where CLDR has a figure.
| Country | Share of population | Estimated speakers |
|---|---|---|
| Papua New Guinea | 71% | 7,132,802 |
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.
Tok Pisin 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 Tok Pisin?
Wikidata gives about 122,000 first-language speakers (Ethnologue, 2004). It also lists about 4 million second-language speakers (Wikidata, with no source given). 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 Tok Pisin sits in the language family tree
Glottolog classifies Tok Pisin as follows, from the largest family down to the language itself.
- Indo-European
- Classical Indo-European
- Germanic
- Northwest Germanic
- West Germanic
- North Sea Germanic
- Anglo-Frisian
- Anglic
- Later Anglic
- Middle-Modern English
- Macro-English
- Pacific Creole English
- Early Melanesian Pidgin
- Tok Pisin
Related languages
Other languages in the Early Melanesian Pidgin group:
- Pijin (25,000 speakers)
- Bislama (10,000 speakers)
- Torres Strait-Lockhart River Creole (7,800 speakers)
More about Tok Pisin
- Read about Tok Pisin on Wikipedia
- Indo-European languages map
- Languages spoken in Papua New Guinea
- All languages, A to Z
Codes: ISO 639-3 tpi, Glottolog tokp1240. Glottolog macroarea: Papunesia.
Questions about Tok Pisin
Where is Tok Pisin spoken?
Tok Pisin is spoken in Papua New Guinea. Unicode CLDR puts it at 71% of the population of Papua New Guinea, which is about 7,132,802 people. On the map it is shown as a single point, because no open area map covers it.
How many people speak Tok Pisin?
Wikidata gives about 122,000 first-language speakers (Ethnologue, 2004). 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 million second-language speakers (Wikidata, with no source given).
Which language family is Tok Pisin in?
Glottolog places Tok Pisin in the Indo-European family, in the branch Classical Indo-European, Germanic, Northwest Germanic, West Germanic, North Sea Germanic, Anglo-Frisian, Anglic, Later Anglic, Middle-Modern English, Macro-English, Pacific Creole English and Early Melanesian Pidgin.