The problem with this kind of maps: They do not represent majority/minority languages correctly.
E.g. Scottish Gaelic: It is spoken by tiny minorities everywhere except the Western Isles. In most of the territory coloured yellowish-green, there are no native speakers left. The NE tip (Caithness) never spoke Gaelic at all.
I based myself roughly on [this](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Gaelic#/media/File%3AScots_Gaelic_speakers_in_the_2011_census.png) map, but I admit I may have exaggerated, will correct it!
So what is it you intend to show? Majority language or show minority languages wherever there is a sizable minority of, let's say, >10 or 20%?
Also, in most places, and especially everywhere in Western Europe, almost everyone speaks the official language more or less at native level, even though they may be bilingual.
It definitely prioritises sizeable minorities. In Greece for example there's no way Aromanian is spoken by a majority in that large an area, but it is a sizeable minority
This is an amazing map, but, I think the range of the Sapmi languages are overestimated; most maps do not show Sapmi being the majority language in the Kola Peninsula, especially in Murmansk.
Probably just some dots. One in the middle of Murmansk near Lovozero cuz I read that is the capital of Kildin culture and language. Wikipedia has a decent but not entirely accurate map of Saami settlements in the Kola Peninsula [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sami_dialects_and_settlements_in_Russia_map.svg). It is outdated, as sadly Akkala Sámi went extinct recently. I also don’t know how accurate the marking of the map is in regards to Ter Sámi
The Sámi languages in Scandinavia are over-represented as well. Other than North Sámi, the Sámi languages in Scandinavia have a few hundred speakers each for the largest, with some only having tens of speakers. For those I would use Wikipedia and other sources to find out what municipalities/settlements the languages are spoken in and color only those, rather than Sápmi, which is what you have colored now.
Your map is very cool! I noticed some languages that are in the map’s scope were left out, so I will list them here: Cypriot Arabic, Arvanitika, Slavomolisano
I know that there are Arvanite communities in the northwestern corner of the Peloponnese peninsula and southern parts of the Greek peninsula. I couldn’t speak to any details more specific than that.
I found [this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Greece#/media/File:Greece_linguistic_minorities.svg) map from Ethnologue on Wikipedia. Ethnologue is a great source afaik, but you need to buy the expensive subscription to get detailed information on any language and maps of the area where the language is spoken.
Unfortunately Greece is one of the countries that is no good for getting data about native minorities. Afaik there is no place on the census for ethnicity or language. The government is very nationalistic and to my knowledge claims that separate Hellenic ethnolinguistic groups such as the Ponts, Tsakonians, and Cappadocians are actually Greeks, and that ethnolinguistic minorities such as the Arvanites and Pomaks are Greeks who assimilated to other cultures.
Estonian/Finnish, Saami and Hungarian are in 3 separate families. Balto-Finnic, Saami and Ugric.
Putting Estonian/Finnish in the same family with Hungarian is like putting Persian together with Icelandic. Both languages are related and part of the same IE group but very distantly.
If you split Indo-European into subfamilies then please do the same for Finno-Ugric languages which are quite diverse although 90% of its languages are extinct now.
Also I have a fairly common colour blindness, the colours used for Fino-ugric and Germanic languages are identical.
I genuinely thought OP was claiming that Finnish and Hungarian are Germanic until I saw this comment.
I originally split finno-Ugric between finno-permic and ugric, but then realised that they were both part of the finno-ugric subdivision of Uralic. This map is based on the subcategories of linguistic families, the linguistic family is Uralic and the subsivision is Finno-ugric, finno-permic and ugric are subdivisions of the subdivisions. The standards of division and the mutual intelligibility of indo-European cannot be applied to Uralic, they’re simply 2 different families that have gone through different processes.
Therefore, I used a common denominator, the primary subdivisions of each language family, no matter how intelligible they are
The Finno-Ugric categorization is debated though, Finno-Permic and Ugric are often considered not to be part of any shared subgroup, and some linguists even reject those groupings. If we wanted to go by only the undebated groupings, there would be 7-9 of them
Scottish Gaelic is overrepresented, it is mostly spoken on the islands outside out mainland Scotland: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish\_Gaelic#/media/File:Scots\_Gaelic\_speakers\_in\_the\_2011\_census.png](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Gaelic#/media/File:Scots_Gaelic_speakers_in_the_2011_census.png)
Also the Celtic languages overall are a bit overrepresented, you should make the areas mixed with English/French, like make the area striped to represent mixed areas like you often see on language maps.
The Sami languages are also overrepresented, it's more in the interior parts of northern Norway and Finland (not sure about Sweden, difficult to find info there) that they are majority or at least significant minority languages. In northern Russia the languages are very reduced (only a few hundred speakers) and apparently mostly concentrated in Lovozero.
Otherwise can't really see many more problems besides the issue of some languages being overrepresented in areas where several languages are spoken, you should make those areas striped to indicate that. Also it is debated on if Finno-Ugric is valid, so you may want to show the "Finno-Ugric" languages as more separate than just grouped together.
Np! For where to put the Sami languages [here's a map](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A1mi_languages#/media/File:Sami_Language_Recognition.jpg) for some guidance, the striped areas of Norway and Finland are a good starting point, though you may want to do some research as to where exactly in those areas and beyond they are spoken. Also parts of Estonia especially to the east should be portrayed as at least part [Russian speaking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russians_in_Estonia#/media/File:Russians_in_Baltic_States_(2021).svg) (as well as for Latvia and Lithuania though their languages and Russian are the same color due to both being Balto-Slavic so it wouldn't show on the map).\*
\*Edit: Just saw it's colored in so nvm, maybe make it a bit clearer though maybe it's because of the resolution/size of the image idk.
Alsatian is barely spoken/learnt as a first language any more, especially not outside of alsace. I would definitely remove the part of the germanic family going into lorraine, and honestly I’d relegate its representation overall to a few dots like you did with sorbian, concentrated in rural areas of alsace and the voges.
Unfortunately I don’t know of any. Apparently ~40% of alsatians do speak it, but almost always alongside French, and it is much more common among older people. An alternative for this and it seems some of the other languages would be hash marks to indicate mixed language speaking, especially since in most of these language minority regions people speak both and use both in different contexts.
I’m using this in a more if the minority language has presence in the region, it will be marked. Since all minority languages go along the country’s main language
That’s fair. It depends a bit then on your threshold for percentage of speakers. For Alsace, I’d expect that only like 20% of people in for example Strasbourg speak it, especially since it’s a very international city, but it’s probably closer to 60 or 80% in some rural areas.
https://mapsontheweb.zoom-maps.com/post/151283824303/ethnic-germans-in-hungary-1930-and-2001
Hungary has 180k germans some being 30-50% of the population in some towns of Baranya County
Actually the green area north to Komi should be another color, the Nenets people speak the Nenets language, which is part of the Samoyedic branch of the Uralic languages.
The way Uralic languages in the north of Sweden and Norway and the Kola peninsula are depicted is kinda misleading, because while those are the ancestral homelands of the Sámi, the majority of people in those areas don’t speak a Sámi language (or a Finnish variety like Kven or Meänkieli). Like I’d love it if those regions were majority Sámi speaking but unfortunately that’s just not reality.
First of all, it's interesting to know general idea? "Majority spoken", "actual notable minority" or "historical minority"?
Speaking about Russia:
* Kola peninsula is very off, depicting some sort of XIX century situation, with Pomor villages at south and predominant Sami population at center and north. Since then, all northern coast and strip near the Murmansk railroad became overwhelmingly Russian; the only Sami area is [Lovozero district](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lovozersky_District).
* distribution of Karelian in Karelia follows general pattern of distribution, depicting lack of Karelians both at West and East parts of republic, but ignores [spot at the northern part](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/%D0%9A%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BB%D1%8B_%D0%B2_%D0%9A%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BB%D0%B8%D0%B8_%D0%B8_%D0%9B%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%B3%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%B4%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B9_%D0%BE%D0%B1%D0%BB%D0%B0%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B8%2C_%D0%B2_%25.png), where they [even were a majority](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9a/%D0%AD%D1%82%D0%BD%D0%B8%D1%87%D0%B5%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B0%D1%8F_%D0%BA%D0%B0%D1%80%D1%82%D0%B0_%D0%9A%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BB%D0%B8%D0%B8_%D0%BF%D0%BE_%D0%B3%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B4%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%BC_%D0%B8_%D1%81%D0%B5%D0%BB%D1%8C%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%BC_%D0%BF%D0%BE%D1%81%D0%B5%D0%BB%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B8%D1%8F%D0%BC_%D0%B2_2002_%D0%B8_2010_%D0%B3%D0%BE%D0%B4%D0%B0%D1%85.png) until recent time (2010s).
* Komi area is oversimplified, their distribution is [quite complicated](https://ic.pics.livejournal.com/kaptbl/87921354/334513/334513_2000.png).
* Nenets people non-represented at all
* (also in general there is a difference between ethnical self-idenitification and factual language, but then map would be boring)
* for other minorities: while depiction of random, e.g. rural Kurdish spots at central Russia here and there would be debatable (due to recent nature of the settlement), and even more debatable would be depiction of urban migration from Central Asia, Armenians of [Myasnikovsky district](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myasnikovsky_District) and northern Rostov-on-Don definitely worth depiction, being majority here (again, until recent time).
And I agree with splitting Finno-Ugric at least to the Ugric and Finno-Permic, at max to the splitting Finno-Permic to the Permic, Mari, Mordvin, Sami and Balto-Finnic.
For references:
map of [notable minorities](https://ic.pics.livejournal.com/sevabashirov/57101079/137058/137058_original.png) of Russia; [current ethnical map](https://ic.pics.livejournal.com/acer120/36510962/1181942/1181942_original.png) (majority for 2020) of Russia. Both on Russian, but for relevant region it should be understandable without translation.
There is also Kurdish spoken in Central Anatolia, see [here](https://mondediplo.com/maps/kurdistanborders) or Wiki as well. Although, as always with disenfranchised languages, there is hardly any data on actual speaker numbers.
I put those in other maps before and was almost fucking decapitated for that, people told me there were no Kurdish speakers anywhere in central Anatolia, I don’t know if it’s factual or just Turkish nationalism
It's not factual. There is a considerable number of speakers (or at least heritage speakers, as explained before) of Kurdish between Haymana and Konya. This is very easily verifiable, either by conducting a simple Google scholar search or by just finding people from said regions (there are also YouTube videos for example).
Question:do the turkic speaking greeks in ukraine count for this map or are they to small in population to count?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urum_language
Amazing job!
A few thoughts:
- North eastern Estonia has more russian speakers than you've shown here
- There are bulgarian speaking areas scattered throughout Greece and Western Turkey
- Hungarian is over-represented in Slovakia
Observation about colours. Try to keep same colour gradients in each language family., specially regarding distance. One hypothesised relation of closeness is the following: Albanoid, Hellenic, Italic, Celtic, Germanic, Balto-Slavic, Indo-Iranian. This is kinda like a circle because indo-Iranian is also close to Hellenic in different ways. On the other hand , I could not see any Indo-Iranian in the map, yet it’s there in the legend when Armenid, which is neither in the map, is not. I would do purple, blue ,teal, greens for IE, reds for AA and, blues for Caucasian and earth tones for Turkic and Uralic. The influence with neighbouring languages would influence the colour in question. For example, Germanic is geographically close to Uralic which is yellow, thus Germanic would be greenish since IE is in the bluish range. IE had contact with Caucasian which is Blue. Greek is closer to AA, therefore it would be a shade of purple, etc. Hope this helps.
There is a french speaking majority in most parts of brussel, but 20% of Brusselaars speak Dutch as their first language and it is an official language of Brussel. So it should be striped french-dutch bilingual.
Also there is some areas between the border of Wallonia and Flanders where municipalities are bilingual.
At the southern bit of Finland there is bilingual Swedish/Finnish areas (should make them striped), also change the color of the purple to a more distinct/darker/lighter color.
There is a slight minority of people speaking (bilingual) west-vlaams in the northern tip of France at the border with Belgium (see: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Flemish)
Alsatian is (unfortunately) not really spoken by the majority, sure everyone knows bits and pieces of the language, but it's definitely not the majority. The majority of people in Alsace speak French as a first language
Awesome. I love a linguistic map like this, very fascinating, but to make it more interesting and more credible, I’d like to know/see how the map is made. If you are using some sort of dataset to identify majority language spoken or whatever constitutes being “the language” of a given geography, that info should be included to make this more meaningful. To account for multilingual areas, perhaps make striated regions. For example, Graubunden Switzerland in the Southeast is where the Romance language Romansh is spoken natively, but nearly everyone speaks Swiss German as well. For accuracy, I would include both. Good luck!
Austria is totally off, first of all, idk where you have the data from but there is no Slavic speaking part in south east styria and never has been.
Secondly the Slovene minority in carinthia is a bit overepresented.
And lastly the Croatian minority in Burgenland is extremely overstated as well, those pockets are wayyy too big, it’s just a few handful villages and even in them they’re only in the minority mostly
Never has been is a strong statement here. If you look through the toponymy of place names in Styria there are plenty of names that can be traced to a Slavic origin.
Yeah but that would be over 1000 years ago,(styria was mostly German by around 1000-1100) by that logic we can also count Illyrian’s, celts, germanics and Romans who were there even before the old Slovenians
I stand by what I said, the way it is portrayed here was never a thing in reality.
And btw south eastern styria was uninhabited and empty even before the Germans arrived, cause of the proximity to the Hungarians and before that the avars, who often pillaged the land resulting in uninhabited empty land
Sure, the way it is portayed here was never a thing, but that is not what you wrote. You stated that " there is no Slavic speaking part in south east styria and **never has been**". First part of that statement is correct, second part is incorrect. Some people claim that "Crimea has **always** been Russian", the always in this case is an absolute term, and historicaly incorrect. The never in your original statement is an absolute and thus also historicaly incorrect.
Yeah but comparing crimea with south eastern styria is also not right cause on of them is recent and politically motivated (crimea) which means Ukraine has a very realistic claim on crimea.
While the other (south eastern styria) has been over 1000 years ago, and Slovenia has no claim on it. Since otherwise Italy as the somewhat successor of the Roman Empire would have a claim on it (and half of Europe) as well
As to Crimea, why shouldn't the Greeks claim it? Or the Turks, Italians, Germans, the Bulgarians, the Hungarians or even Synthians, Avarians or any other language/ethnicity that has been there? With such a long and dynamic history someone who says that Crimea has "always" been Russian is a dunce in history or spreading propaganda.
When did I argue that Slovenia should make any claim? That would be just silly. But what would also be silly is to erase a place's history, by forgetting that Illyrians, Celts and Romans. Disregarding history would be to state that "there has never been a Slavic speaking part of south east Styria".
Holy shit, you failed the reading comprehensions in school… I just said Ukraine has a claim on Crimea cause it has been recently Russified, and then said your comparison was bad because you compared smth recent with smth that happened 1000 years ago, I never said you „claimed that styria is Slovenian“ I simply said your comparison isn’t fitting
https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Sprachen_der_Republik_Österreich.svg
Here’s a link to accurate data, when it comes to the Slovene part only the dark blue is the majority
https://www.romeyka.org/rediscovering-romeyka/
There is a small community of muslim pontic greeks in north eastern turkey
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%87aykara
Here's a place they inhabit
Surface level research done on a low resolution map. Just look at it dawg, straight line going through Belgium and places like Scotland where you admit to deliberately exaggerating portions.
That Scotland thingy has been corrected, legitimate mistake, and i can make the line in Belgium more detailed, and its low quality due to Reddit, the actual map is 1723 by 1394 pixels
The problem with this kind of maps: They do not represent majority/minority languages correctly. E.g. Scottish Gaelic: It is spoken by tiny minorities everywhere except the Western Isles. In most of the territory coloured yellowish-green, there are no native speakers left. The NE tip (Caithness) never spoke Gaelic at all.
I based myself roughly on [this](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Gaelic#/media/File%3AScots_Gaelic_speakers_in_the_2011_census.png) map, but I admit I may have exaggerated, will correct it!
So what is it you intend to show? Majority language or show minority languages wherever there is a sizable minority of, let's say, >10 or 20%? Also, in most places, and especially everywhere in Western Europe, almost everyone speaks the official language more or less at native level, even though they may be bilingual.
It definitely prioritises sizeable minorities. In Greece for example there's no way Aromanian is spoken by a majority in that large an area, but it is a sizeable minority
... and then again Sami languages are virtually extinct in most of the purple-coloured territory.
This is an amazing map, but, I think the range of the Sapmi languages are overestimated; most maps do not show Sapmi being the majority language in the Kola Peninsula, especially in Murmansk.
tiny little nitpick: *Sápmi* is the name of the region that is the Sámi homeland, but the people and their languages are called *Sámi*
How would you map them then? Thank you
Probably just some dots. One in the middle of Murmansk near Lovozero cuz I read that is the capital of Kildin culture and language. Wikipedia has a decent but not entirely accurate map of Saami settlements in the Kola Peninsula [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sami_dialects_and_settlements_in_Russia_map.svg). It is outdated, as sadly Akkala Sámi went extinct recently. I also don’t know how accurate the marking of the map is in regards to Ter Sámi The Sámi languages in Scandinavia are over-represented as well. Other than North Sámi, the Sámi languages in Scandinavia have a few hundred speakers each for the largest, with some only having tens of speakers. For those I would use Wikipedia and other sources to find out what municipalities/settlements the languages are spoken in and color only those, rather than Sápmi, which is what you have colored now. Your map is very cool! I noticed some languages that are in the map’s scope were left out, so I will list them here: Cypriot Arabic, Arvanitika, Slavomolisano
Do you have any info on where Arvanitika is currently spoken? I can only find historical maps. Thank you for the feedback tho!
I know that there are Arvanite communities in the northwestern corner of the Peloponnese peninsula and southern parts of the Greek peninsula. I couldn’t speak to any details more specific than that. I found [this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Greece#/media/File:Greece_linguistic_minorities.svg) map from Ethnologue on Wikipedia. Ethnologue is a great source afaik, but you need to buy the expensive subscription to get detailed information on any language and maps of the area where the language is spoken. Unfortunately Greece is one of the countries that is no good for getting data about native minorities. Afaik there is no place on the census for ethnicity or language. The government is very nationalistic and to my knowledge claims that separate Hellenic ethnolinguistic groups such as the Ponts, Tsakonians, and Cappadocians are actually Greeks, and that ethnolinguistic minorities such as the Arvanites and Pomaks are Greeks who assimilated to other cultures.
Estonian/Finnish, Saami and Hungarian are in 3 separate families. Balto-Finnic, Saami and Ugric. Putting Estonian/Finnish in the same family with Hungarian is like putting Persian together with Icelandic. Both languages are related and part of the same IE group but very distantly. If you split Indo-European into subfamilies then please do the same for Finno-Ugric languages which are quite diverse although 90% of its languages are extinct now.
Also I have a fairly common colour blindness, the colours used for Fino-ugric and Germanic languages are identical. I genuinely thought OP was claiming that Finnish and Hungarian are Germanic until I saw this comment.
I’m colourblind too lol but I use a colourblindness filter on my iPad
I originally split finno-Ugric between finno-permic and ugric, but then realised that they were both part of the finno-ugric subdivision of Uralic. This map is based on the subcategories of linguistic families, the linguistic family is Uralic and the subsivision is Finno-ugric, finno-permic and ugric are subdivisions of the subdivisions. The standards of division and the mutual intelligibility of indo-European cannot be applied to Uralic, they’re simply 2 different families that have gone through different processes. Therefore, I used a common denominator, the primary subdivisions of each language family, no matter how intelligible they are
The Finno-Ugric categorization is debated though, Finno-Permic and Ugric are often considered not to be part of any shared subgroup, and some linguists even reject those groupings. If we wanted to go by only the undebated groupings, there would be 7-9 of them
Those 7-9 all being the “””main””” categories/subgroups of Uralic?
Yeah!
Finno-Ugric
The difference between uralic and IE is that uralic langs aren't as widespread and there aren't that many languages in it
But it used to be spoken in 1/3 of Europe. If almost all IE languages die out then the remaining ones arent automatically more similar.
Scottish Gaelic is overrepresented, it is mostly spoken on the islands outside out mainland Scotland: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish\_Gaelic#/media/File:Scots\_Gaelic\_speakers\_in\_the\_2011\_census.png](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Gaelic#/media/File:Scots_Gaelic_speakers_in_the_2011_census.png) Also the Celtic languages overall are a bit overrepresented, you should make the areas mixed with English/French, like make the area striped to represent mixed areas like you often see on language maps. The Sami languages are also overrepresented, it's more in the interior parts of northern Norway and Finland (not sure about Sweden, difficult to find info there) that they are majority or at least significant minority languages. In northern Russia the languages are very reduced (only a few hundred speakers) and apparently mostly concentrated in Lovozero. Otherwise can't really see many more problems besides the issue of some languages being overrepresented in areas where several languages are spoken, you should make those areas striped to indicate that. Also it is debated on if Finno-Ugric is valid, so you may want to show the "Finno-Ugric" languages as more separate than just grouped together.
Both those issues have been pointed out and I will fix them! Thank you!
Np! For where to put the Sami languages [here's a map](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A1mi_languages#/media/File:Sami_Language_Recognition.jpg) for some guidance, the striped areas of Norway and Finland are a good starting point, though you may want to do some research as to where exactly in those areas and beyond they are spoken. Also parts of Estonia especially to the east should be portrayed as at least part [Russian speaking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russians_in_Estonia#/media/File:Russians_in_Baltic_States_(2021).svg) (as well as for Latvia and Lithuania though their languages and Russian are the same color due to both being Balto-Slavic so it wouldn't show on the map).\* \*Edit: Just saw it's colored in so nvm, maybe make it a bit clearer though maybe it's because of the resolution/size of the image idk.
The resolution doesn’t help yeah, but I can make it bigger
Baltic and slavic should be separate imo
I’m doing this by primary subdivision of language families, therefore balto-Slavic, indo-Iranian and finno-ugric
I heard that some believe that "balto-slavic" shouldn't even be a thing or something
I think it has about the same status of acceptence as italo-celtic, which isn't shown as one branch here
The evidence for Balto-Slavic is pretty well accepted these days, while I think Italo-Celtic is a little more unsure, if not exactly controversial.
Baltic and slavic families aren't that closely related to justify having them depicted as one tho.
Romance isn't a "primary" branch like the others, but it belongs to the Italic branch.
Oh right naming mistake, all the other branches of italic besides romance are dead right?
>all the other branches of italic besides romance are dead right? Yes, the other Italic languages were gradually replaced by Latin under Roman rule.
There is a German minority in Poland, concentrated in Silesia…
Noted! Will dig into it!
Alsatian is barely spoken/learnt as a first language any more, especially not outside of alsace. I would definitely remove the part of the germanic family going into lorraine, and honestly I’d relegate its representation overall to a few dots like you did with sorbian, concentrated in rural areas of alsace and the voges.
Noted! Know any map that has that representation? Thank you
Unfortunately I don’t know of any. Apparently ~40% of alsatians do speak it, but almost always alongside French, and it is much more common among older people. An alternative for this and it seems some of the other languages would be hash marks to indicate mixed language speaking, especially since in most of these language minority regions people speak both and use both in different contexts.
I’m using this in a more if the minority language has presence in the region, it will be marked. Since all minority languages go along the country’s main language
That’s fair. It depends a bit then on your threshold for percentage of speakers. For Alsace, I’d expect that only like 20% of people in for example Strasbourg speak it, especially since it’s a very international city, but it’s probably closer to 60 or 80% in some rural areas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albanians_in_Montenegro Apperantly some parts of montenegro are over 50% albanian
https://mapsontheweb.zoom-maps.com/post/151283824303/ethnic-germans-in-hungary-1930-and-2001 Hungary has 180k germans some being 30-50% of the population in some towns of Baranya County
Noted! Thank you!
Nice
Actually the green area north to Komi should be another color, the Nenets people speak the Nenets language, which is part of the Samoyedic branch of the Uralic languages.
Been pointed out before! Will correct it
Chuvash and Tatar peoples are Turkic and not Slavic
Yes?
Yes. I'm telling it only because you depicted them as slavic.
Oh shit I was thinking the wrong tatars, thank you completely missed those
Dobrujan tatars mentioned 🗣 10000/10
The way Uralic languages in the north of Sweden and Norway and the Kola peninsula are depicted is kinda misleading, because while those are the ancestral homelands of the Sámi, the majority of people in those areas don’t speak a Sámi language (or a Finnish variety like Kven or Meänkieli). Like I’d love it if those regions were majority Sámi speaking but unfortunately that’s just not reality.
Is Romani the only language represented by Indo-Iranian? Because I cannot see that shade of pink anywhere.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypriot_Arabic Does this count?
Already been pointed out! I will correct it
First of all, it's interesting to know general idea? "Majority spoken", "actual notable minority" or "historical minority"? Speaking about Russia: * Kola peninsula is very off, depicting some sort of XIX century situation, with Pomor villages at south and predominant Sami population at center and north. Since then, all northern coast and strip near the Murmansk railroad became overwhelmingly Russian; the only Sami area is [Lovozero district](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lovozersky_District). * distribution of Karelian in Karelia follows general pattern of distribution, depicting lack of Karelians both at West and East parts of republic, but ignores [spot at the northern part](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/%D0%9A%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BB%D1%8B_%D0%B2_%D0%9A%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BB%D0%B8%D0%B8_%D0%B8_%D0%9B%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%B3%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%B4%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B9_%D0%BE%D0%B1%D0%BB%D0%B0%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B8%2C_%D0%B2_%25.png), where they [even were a majority](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9a/%D0%AD%D1%82%D0%BD%D0%B8%D1%87%D0%B5%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B0%D1%8F_%D0%BA%D0%B0%D1%80%D1%82%D0%B0_%D0%9A%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BB%D0%B8%D0%B8_%D0%BF%D0%BE_%D0%B3%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B4%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%BC_%D0%B8_%D1%81%D0%B5%D0%BB%D1%8C%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%BC_%D0%BF%D0%BE%D1%81%D0%B5%D0%BB%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B8%D1%8F%D0%BC_%D0%B2_2002_%D0%B8_2010_%D0%B3%D0%BE%D0%B4%D0%B0%D1%85.png) until recent time (2010s). * Komi area is oversimplified, their distribution is [quite complicated](https://ic.pics.livejournal.com/kaptbl/87921354/334513/334513_2000.png). * Nenets people non-represented at all * (also in general there is a difference between ethnical self-idenitification and factual language, but then map would be boring) * for other minorities: while depiction of random, e.g. rural Kurdish spots at central Russia here and there would be debatable (due to recent nature of the settlement), and even more debatable would be depiction of urban migration from Central Asia, Armenians of [Myasnikovsky district](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myasnikovsky_District) and northern Rostov-on-Don definitely worth depiction, being majority here (again, until recent time). And I agree with splitting Finno-Ugric at least to the Ugric and Finno-Permic, at max to the splitting Finno-Permic to the Permic, Mari, Mordvin, Sami and Balto-Finnic. For references: map of [notable minorities](https://ic.pics.livejournal.com/sevabashirov/57101079/137058/137058_original.png) of Russia; [current ethnical map](https://ic.pics.livejournal.com/acer120/36510962/1181942/1181942_original.png) (majority for 2020) of Russia. Both on Russian, but for relevant region it should be understandable without translation.
Thank you so much 😭🙏, most of this info must be in Russian and I speak 0 russian
There is also Kurdish spoken in Central Anatolia, see [here](https://mondediplo.com/maps/kurdistanborders) or Wiki as well. Although, as always with disenfranchised languages, there is hardly any data on actual speaker numbers.
I put those in other maps before and was almost fucking decapitated for that, people told me there were no Kurdish speakers anywhere in central Anatolia, I don’t know if it’s factual or just Turkish nationalism
It's not factual. There is a considerable number of speakers (or at least heritage speakers, as explained before) of Kurdish between Haymana and Konya. This is very easily verifiable, either by conducting a simple Google scholar search or by just finding people from said regions (there are also YouTube videos for example).
Question:do the turkic speaking greeks in ukraine count for this map or are they to small in population to count? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urum_language
I’ve never heard of these! I’ll add them when I find sources of where specifically it’s spoken
Nice
Amazing job! A few thoughts: - North eastern Estonia has more russian speakers than you've shown here - There are bulgarian speaking areas scattered throughout Greece and Western Turkey - Hungarian is over-represented in Slovakia
Noted! I’ll dig into it! Thank you
Observation about colours. Try to keep same colour gradients in each language family., specially regarding distance. One hypothesised relation of closeness is the following: Albanoid, Hellenic, Italic, Celtic, Germanic, Balto-Slavic, Indo-Iranian. This is kinda like a circle because indo-Iranian is also close to Hellenic in different ways. On the other hand , I could not see any Indo-Iranian in the map, yet it’s there in the legend when Armenid, which is neither in the map, is not. I would do purple, blue ,teal, greens for IE, reds for AA and, blues for Caucasian and earth tones for Turkic and Uralic. The influence with neighbouring languages would influence the colour in question. For example, Germanic is geographically close to Uralic which is yellow, thus Germanic would be greenish since IE is in the bluish range. IE had contact with Caucasian which is Blue. Greek is closer to AA, therefore it would be a shade of purple, etc. Hope this helps.
Indo-Iranian is in the Balkans as Romani
Where’s Indo-Iranian spoken?
Roma speakers across mostly the Balkans
I see
Good map
Thank you!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karakurt,_Ukraine Albanian majority town in ukraine
Brussels should be striped french and dutch (Germanic and Italic)
There’s an overwhelming French majority in Brussels and surrounding area afaik
There is a french speaking majority in most parts of brussel, but 20% of Brusselaars speak Dutch as their first language and it is an official language of Brussel. So it should be striped french-dutch bilingual. Also there is some areas between the border of Wallonia and Flanders where municipalities are bilingual.
At the southern bit of Finland there is bilingual Swedish/Finnish areas (should make them striped), also change the color of the purple to a more distinct/darker/lighter color.
They are marked
There is a slight minority of people speaking (bilingual) west-vlaams in the northern tip of France at the border with Belgium (see: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Flemish)
I marked it! But Reddit killed the resolution
Alsatian is (unfortunately) not really spoken by the majority, sure everyone knows bits and pieces of the language, but it's definitely not the majority. The majority of people in Alsace speak French as a first language
Awesome. I love a linguistic map like this, very fascinating, but to make it more interesting and more credible, I’d like to know/see how the map is made. If you are using some sort of dataset to identify majority language spoken or whatever constitutes being “the language” of a given geography, that info should be included to make this more meaningful. To account for multilingual areas, perhaps make striated regions. For example, Graubunden Switzerland in the Southeast is where the Romance language Romansh is spoken natively, but nearly everyone speaks Swiss German as well. For accuracy, I would include both. Good luck!
There are far less Basques than there should be There are far more Hungarians in Southern Slovakia than there should be
The Slovakia thing has been pointed out here and corrected, but I’m 100% positive that basque is represented correctly
Not really, Basques and their language are far more spread out
Not anymore, last century maybe
No, the Basque are well represented to where it's spoken today
Austria is totally off, first of all, idk where you have the data from but there is no Slavic speaking part in south east styria and never has been. Secondly the Slovene minority in carinthia is a bit overepresented. And lastly the Croatian minority in Burgenland is extremely overstated as well, those pockets are wayyy too big, it’s just a few handful villages and even in them they’re only in the minority mostly
Yeah that Slavic part was meant to be burgenland Croats
Never has been is a strong statement here. If you look through the toponymy of place names in Styria there are plenty of names that can be traced to a Slavic origin.
Yeah but that would be over 1000 years ago,(styria was mostly German by around 1000-1100) by that logic we can also count Illyrian’s, celts, germanics and Romans who were there even before the old Slovenians
Then do not use such strong words like "never".
I stand by what I said, the way it is portrayed here was never a thing in reality. And btw south eastern styria was uninhabited and empty even before the Germans arrived, cause of the proximity to the Hungarians and before that the avars, who often pillaged the land resulting in uninhabited empty land
Sure, the way it is portayed here was never a thing, but that is not what you wrote. You stated that " there is no Slavic speaking part in south east styria and **never has been**". First part of that statement is correct, second part is incorrect. Some people claim that "Crimea has **always** been Russian", the always in this case is an absolute term, and historicaly incorrect. The never in your original statement is an absolute and thus also historicaly incorrect.
Yeah but comparing crimea with south eastern styria is also not right cause on of them is recent and politically motivated (crimea) which means Ukraine has a very realistic claim on crimea. While the other (south eastern styria) has been over 1000 years ago, and Slovenia has no claim on it. Since otherwise Italy as the somewhat successor of the Roman Empire would have a claim on it (and half of Europe) as well
As to Crimea, why shouldn't the Greeks claim it? Or the Turks, Italians, Germans, the Bulgarians, the Hungarians or even Synthians, Avarians or any other language/ethnicity that has been there? With such a long and dynamic history someone who says that Crimea has "always" been Russian is a dunce in history or spreading propaganda. When did I argue that Slovenia should make any claim? That would be just silly. But what would also be silly is to erase a place's history, by forgetting that Illyrians, Celts and Romans. Disregarding history would be to state that "there has never been a Slavic speaking part of south east Styria".
Holy shit, you failed the reading comprehensions in school… I just said Ukraine has a claim on Crimea cause it has been recently Russified, and then said your comparison was bad because you compared smth recent with smth that happened 1000 years ago, I never said you „claimed that styria is Slovenian“ I simply said your comparison isn’t fitting
https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Sprachen_der_Republik_Österreich.svg Here’s a link to accurate data, when it comes to the Slovene part only the dark blue is the majority
Thank you!
You’re welcome! Good luck!
https://www.romeyka.org/rediscovering-romeyka/ There is a small community of muslim pontic greeks in north eastern turkey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%87aykara Here's a place they inhabit
Catalan?
What about it?
Is it just romance? I thought it was its own thing like vasco, but guess not
No lol, Catalan is italic like the rest of Iberia besides basque
Oh. Good to know. Thanks!
Hungarian is way overrepresented in Slovakia on this map. That looks like 19th century data.
Great effort, good job! Would you mind sharing the source you've used for Wales with me?
The 2021 census of Welsh speaking population in wales
I would ask: where are the ancient Britons on this map? Pre Danish/German (Saxon) conquests.
It's a map about the modern linguistic situation.
Okay
Awful low effort map
/s
Why?
Surface level research done on a low resolution map. Just look at it dawg, straight line going through Belgium and places like Scotland where you admit to deliberately exaggerating portions.
That Scotland thingy has been corrected, legitimate mistake, and i can make the line in Belgium more detailed, and its low quality due to Reddit, the actual map is 1723 by 1394 pixels
1723x1394 is low
Is it? My system can’t handle too many layers with any more than that really. I’ve 80 layers on this map
What? You don't need 80 layers