Maps of Massep

South Pacific: Papua New Guinea


South Pacific: Papua New Guinea


Data Source: 
Tryon, Darrell. 2007. New Britain and New Ireland, South-Eastern Papua New Guinea, Southern Papua New Guinea, Northern Papua New Guinea, Irian Jaya. Atlas of the World's Languages, eds R. E. Asher and Christopher Moseley, 136-143. Oxford: Routledge.

"Austronesian: Composite". The LINGUIST List MultiTree Language Relationship Database

Date Digitized:  March 2012

Map Description:
This map depicts the indigenous languages spoken in Papua New Guinea. The island of Papua New Guinea is split into two countries: Papua New Guinea (eastern) and Indonesia (western). This is a political division, and several Papuan languages are spoken in both areas, which is why a portion of Indonesia is included on this map.
The largest language family in Papua New Guinea is the Trans-New Guinea language family, represented in red on this map. The next largest are Sepik-Ramu represented as green, and primarily in the north-eastern portion of the country; and the Oceanic subgroup of languages represented in aqua and spoken on the islands and along the coastal areas. Ethnologue states there are currently 841 languages actively spoken in Papua New Guinea, and approximate 11 languages that have died. Amongst these, the Austronesian languages are the most widely spoken.


This original map was made by vectorizing data from the MultiTree language database and the Atlas of the World's Languages.

Other LLMAP resources related to this project:
South Pacific: Solomon Islands & Bougainville
South Pacific: The Philippines
South Pacific: Borneo
South Pacific: Malaysia
South Pacific: Vanuatu & New Caledonia
South Pacific: Indonesia (Archipelago)



Note: Scanned or downloaded images have been geo-registered for compatibility with our project interface. Slight imperfections are an inevitable result of the registration process.

The UNESCO Database of Endangered Languages (UNESCO)

The UNESCO Database of Endangered Languages

Map Creator:   LINGUIST List (Anthony Aristar)
Data Source:   Mosely Christopher. 2010. Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger, 3rd edn. Paris, UNESCO Publishing, Online version. http://www.unesco.org/culture/languages-atlas/ (29 November 2010)
Contact:   llmaplinguistlist.org
Usage Notes/Copyright Status:   Used by Permission
Date Created:   29 November 2010

Map Description:
UNESCO’s Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger is a database intended to raise awareness about language endangerment and the need to safeguard the world’s linguistic diversity among policy-makers, speaker communities and the general public, and to be a tool to monitor the status of endangered languages and the trends in linguistic diversity at the global level.

Degrees of endangerment
The map designates the degrees of endangerment as based on UNESCO’s Language Vitality and Endangerment framework.

This establishes six degrees of vitality/endangerment based on nine factors. Of these factors, the most salient is that of intergenerational transmission.

Degree of endangerment Intergenerational Language Transmission
safe language is spoken by all generations; intergenerational transmission is uninterrupted
>> not included in the map
vulnerable most children speak the language, but it may be restricted to certain domains (e.g., home)
definitely endangered children no longer learn the language as mother tongue in the home
severely endangered language is spoken by grandparents and older generations; while the parent generation may understand it, they do not speak it to children or among themselves
critically endangered the youngest speakers are grandparents and older, and they speak the language partially and infrequently
extinct there are no speakers left
>> included in the Atlas if presumably extinct since the 1950s




Note: Scanned or downloaded images have been geo-registered for compatibility with our project interface. Slight imperfections are an inevitable result of the registration process.