Indo-European · ISO 639-3 pap
Papiamento Language Papiamentu
Papiamento is an Indo-European language spoken by about 549,000 people in 2 countries. It is an official language of Aruba and Curacao. It is written in the Latin script.
Where Papiamento is spoken
- Official language
- Regional official
- Spoken by 10%+
- 1–10%
- Smaller communities
Language family
- Indo-European
- Classical Indo-European
- Italic
- Latino-Faliscan
- Latinic
- Imperial Latin
- Romance
- Italo-Western Romance
- Western Romance
- Shifted Western Romance
- Southwestern Shifted Romance
- West Ibero-Romance
- Galician Romance
- Macro-Portuguese
- Upper Guinea Portuguese
- Papiamento
Writing system
Latin script
Related languages
About the Papiamento language
Papiamento (Papiamentu) is spoken by about 549,000 people, which makes it the 494th most spoken language in the world — just behind Maltese (570,000) and ahead of Udmurt (540,000). It belongs to the Indo-European language family and, more precisely, to the Upper Guinea Portuguese group within the Italic branch.
Where is Papiamento spoken?
Papiamento is used in 2 countries. The largest communities live in Curacao (124,164) and Aruba (76,288). More than half of the population speaks it in Aruba and Curacao — the places where travellers will hear it everywhere.
Share of the population that speaks Papiamento: Curacao 81% (124,164) and Aruba 61% (76,288).
Papiamento is an official language in 2 countries: Aruba and Curacao.
Writing system and status
Papiamento is written in the Latin script. It is a safe, widely transmitted language: children still learn it at home as their first language.
Its closest relatives in the same branch of the family are Portuguese, Galician, Spanish, Asturian, Catalan, Occitan (post 1500) and 2 more.
ISO codes: ISO 639-3 pap.
Frequently asked questions about Papiamento
How many people speak Papiamento?
Where is Papiamento spoken?
In which countries is Papiamento an official language?
What language family does Papiamento belong to?
What is Papiamento called in Papiamento?
Is Papiamento an endangered language?
Data: Languages of the World dataset (MIT) — ISO 639-3, Glottolog (CC BY 4.0), Unicode CLDR, Google LinguaMeta (CC BY 4.0) and Wikidata; country lists: samayo/country-json (MIT). Speaker numbers include first- and second-language speakers where sources report them.