Burmese

33.2M people can hold a conversation in Burmese across 3 countries; official in 1.

Data as of 28 Oct 2026 · ISO 639-3 mya · Glottolog nucl1310 · Sino-Tibetan · CLDR 49, Glottolog 5.3, States sheet

Where Burmese is spoken

Share of each country's people who can hold a conversation in it.

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Small territories are not drawn at this scale.

Countries

Share of the population and people who can hold a conversation in it, by country.

How this is measured

Most figures are CLDR's estimates of speakers. CLDR lists only each country's larger languages, so where it has no figure a national census or official survey fills in, and the Figure column says which and what it counts. A home-language figure is a floor: more people can speak the language than use it at home.

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Myanmar

official

64%

32.9M

Bangladesh

none

0.2%

357K

Canada

none · Census, mother tongue

0.0%

#	Country			Status	Figure
1	Myanmar	64%	32.9M	official	CLDR
2	Bangladesh	0.2%	357K	none	CLDR
3	Canada	0.0%	4K	none	Census, mother tongue

States where it is the first language

States whose first language is this one, largest population first.

7.4M

6.2M

6.2M

5.8M

5.3M

4.9M

3.9M

3.2M

2.1M

1.7M

1.6M

1.4M

#	State	Country
1	Yangon	Myanmar	7,360,703
2	Irrawaddy	Myanmar	6,184,829
3	Mandalay	Myanmar	6,165,723
4	Shan	Myanmar	5,824,432
5	Sagaing	Myanmar	5,325,347
6	Bago	Myanmar	4,867,373
7	Magway	Myanmar	3,917,055
8	Rakhine	Myanmar	3,188,807
9	Mon	Myanmar	2,054,393
10	Kachin	Myanmar	1,689,441
11	Kayin	Myanmar	1,574,079
12	Tanintharyi	Myanmar	1,408,401
13	Naypyitaw	Myanmar	1,160,242
14	Chin	Myanmar	478,801
15	Kayah	Myanmar	286,627

Family

Where it sits in the Glottolog tree, root to language.

Sino-Tibetan
Burmo-Qiangic
Lolo-Burmese
Burmish
Southern Burmish
Mranmaic
Nuclear Mranmaic
Burmese

Sino-Tibetan: 41 languages, 1.68B speakers.

Where these numbers come from

Unicode CLDR territoryInfo (release 49) (Unicode License v3). Country-level language shares, official status and Tier 3 reach (populationPercent is total speakers, first plus second language).
Glottolog 5.3 (CC BY 4.0). Language names, ISO 639-3 codes, families.
Database of International and Intranational Linguistic distances (DICL v2), USITC (CC BY 4.0). Country-pair linguistic proximity (loaded, not yet shown in release one).
States (ISO 3166-2) sheet, MetroAreas workbook (Citizen of Nowhere, own compilation). States, populations and the four language labels per state.
Natural Earth 1:110m Admin 0 Countries (nvkelso/natural-earth-vector) (Public domain). World outline for the language maps (world-110m.geojson, properties reduced to iso3 and name).
Country layer of this site (countries.json workbook population, World Bank iso2 and iso3, OWID country-population) (Citizen of Nowhere, own compilation; World Bank CC BY 4.0; OWID CC BY). Country population, iso2 and /countries slug joined onto languages, countries and families (speakers = share x population).

Definitions are on the Method page.