A family-coloured language map of Indonesia, bound to its genealogical tree
726 regional languages of Indonesia, coloured by the family they belong to — languages that descend from a single common ancestor.
Hover a branch of the genealogical tree and every territory in that family lights up on the map. Click a territory and the tree opens that language’s line of descent.
- Languages
- 726
- Families
- 56
- With a territory
- 421
- Isolates
- 23
One language, climbed a level at a time
Take a single language and climb its ancestry. Each level adds relatives, and each level widens the ground those relatives occupy. That widening is what the colours on the map carry — one colour is one top level.
| Level | Languages | Spans |
|---|---|---|
| Bima | the language itself | |
| East Sumbawa | 3 | 50 kmKolo to Sangar |
| Bima-Lembata | 43 | 660 kmSangar to Alorese |
| Malayo-Polynesian | 464 | 5,010 kmKayupulau to Sikule |
| Austronesian | 464 | 5,010 kmKayupulau to Sikule |
At the top: Austronesian, 464 languages on this map, spanning 5,010 km. That is one colour on the map above — and Bima is one small patch inside it.
Span is the distance between the two furthest-apart recorded points in that branch, so it is a floor. A single language gets no figure: one point has no extent.
What is a language family?
A language family is a group of languages shown to descend from one common ancestor language — a family in the genealogical sense. Javanese, Balinese, Tagalog and Māori all belong to Austronesian, for instance. The tree on this page is that genealogy.
The Austronesian–Papuan seam
Indonesia is one of the most linguistically dense territories on earth. This map shows that structure: colour carries family, so the boundary between Austronesian and the Papuan families is visible the moment the map opens.
Guided views
A few short ways into the data.
The Austronesian–Papuan seam
Austronesian sweeps west to east across the archipelago; in the east sit dozens of separate families called “Papuan” for where they are, not because they are related. The seam between them runs through Halmahera and is visible on the map.
262 languages are emphasised in this view
Isolates
Languages with no known relatives. Rare, and interesting precisely because they have none.
23 languages are emphasised in this view
Most endangered
Filtered to the categories nearest extinction according to Glottolog’s AES.
98 languages are emphasised in this view
What this map does not claim
This is not a census of speakers today, not an official government product, and it uses no Ethnologue data in any field.
Distribution as described by atlas sources, 1990–2020. This map shows the distribution described by those atlas sources, not a census of who speaks what today.