This paper elucidates a sociolinguistics of language vitality that accounts for ‘minority’ and unofficial languages across multiple localities in dispersed communities of multilingual speakers of Zambia where only 7 out of 73 indigenous languages have been indicated official and ‘zoned’ for use in specified regions. Using signage and narratives of place from selected rural and urban centres of the City of Lusaka and the City of Livingstone, it is displayed how minority and non-official languages (some of which are unofficial and minor in region, yet official in other regions) come to be part of the semiotic landscapes and social narratives of place outside legislated language ‘zones’. The paper problematizes intergenerational language vitality and endangerment frameworks and notions of linguistic performative identities and reciprocal bilingualism to propose that the presence of ‘out of place’ languages in dispersed communities of speakers in multiple localities is indicatory of the vitality of the languages concerned. Language revitalisation frameworks need to examine alternative ways of language transmission centering on mobile multisited and delocalised communities of speakers and their heteroglossic language practices. This means locating the languages or their fragmented forms in the spoken and written repertoire range of dispersed multilingual communities across multiple localities.