World Language Map

Where is Western Penan spoken?

Western Penan is an Austronesian language, spoken in Brunei and Malaysia. 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 Western Penan is spoken

Western Penan is spoken in 2 countries: Brunei and Malaysia.

Country
Brunei
Malaysia

On the map, Western Penan 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 Western Penan.

How many people speak Western Penan?

Wikidata holds no speaker count for this language.

Status: Threatened. Glottolog lists it as threatened: it is still spoken by all generations, but there are signs that the number of speakers is falling.

Where Western Penan sits in the language family tree

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

  1. Austronesian
  2. Malayo-Polynesian
  3. North Borneo Malayo-Polynesian
  4. North Sarawakan
  5. Kenyahic
  6. Lowland Kenyah
  7. Western Lowland Kenyah-Penan
  8. Penan
  9. Western Penan-Sebop
  10. Western Penan

Related languages

Other languages in the Western Penan-Sebop group:

More about Western Penan

Codes: ISO 639-3 pne, Glottolog west2563. Glottolog macroarea: Papunesia.

Questions about Western Penan

Where is Western Penan spoken?

Western Penan is spoken in Brunei and Malaysia. On the map it is shown as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007.

Which language family is Western Penan in?

Glottolog places Western Penan in the Austronesian family, in the branch Malayo-Polynesian, North Borneo Malayo-Polynesian, North Sarawakan, Kenyahic, Lowland Kenyah, Western Lowland Kenyah-Penan, Penan and Western Penan-Sebop.

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