Atlantic-Congo · ISO 639-3 tiv
Tiv Language
Tiv is an Atlantic-Congo language spoken by about 3.4 million people in 1 country. It is written in the Latin script.
Where Tiv is spoken
- Official language
- Regional official
- Spoken by 10%+
- 1–10%
- Smaller communities
About the Tiv language
Tiv is spoken by about 3.4 million people, which makes it the 231st most spoken language in the world — just behind Hmong Daw (3.4 million) and ahead of Bhili (3.3 million). It belongs to the Atlantic-Congo language family and, more precisely, to the Tiv-Iyive-Otanga group within the Benue-Congo branch.
Where is Tiv spoken?
Tiv is used in 1 country. The largest communities live in Nigeria (3.8 million).
Tiv is not a national official language anywhere.
Writing system and status
Tiv 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 Swahili, Lingala, Zulu, Chichewa, Tsonga, Kinyarwanda and 2 more.
ISO codes: ISO 639-3 tiv.
Frequently asked questions about Tiv
How many people speak Tiv?
Where is Tiv spoken?
What language family does Tiv belong to?
Is Tiv 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.