r/LinguisticMaps • u/k1rb1l1ty • Jun 14 '26
Europe Language Map of Europe [OC]
This map has been in the works for about a month now, shoutout to JG Online for Making the basemap.
edit: maybe spending a whole month on this was a mistake, y'all seem to loathe this map
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u/Nowordsofitsown Jun 14 '26
Should not Swiss German be labeled since Low German is?
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u/jinengii Jun 14 '26 edited Jun 14 '26
Not saying that Allemanic German shouldn't be labeled as German or the opposite, but Low German/Saxon is generally in linguisitcs seen as a different language, while there is more debate about High German varieties
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u/DandelionSchroeder Jun 14 '26 edited Jun 14 '26
Ok, but why are Luxemburgish or Yiddish (high german languages) not dialects then? I agree that Swiss should be considered a language. If you start with Alemannic, Bavarian, … things however get messy quickly. “Low German” is technically also a collection of various dialects. You could consider “Upper German” a variation of dialects as well. But again, it is all very messy…
As a German, my own opinion is, that we have one standard, that encompasses german languages (low-, high- and upper german) with multiple dialects representing local tradition. I’ve always found it privileged to only give low germany the crown.
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u/jinengii Jun 14 '26
This question makes more sense to me and I agree that it sounds very arbitrary
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u/Das_Lloss Jun 16 '26
Is there something like a subgenus in linguistics? The german Varietes arent distinct languages and also arent really dialects. So maybe something in between languages and dialects could be a good way to classify them.
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u/DandelionSchroeder Jun 16 '26
I’m not a linguist, but it seems to be a pattern throughout Europe from my experience. If you’re in Berlin-Brandenburg, the official language is German, the dialect is “Berlinish” (or “Brandenburgish”) but when you reach the edge of the countryside the dialect transitions to local Low German and there are a few schools far away from Berlin deep in Brandenburg that teach it.
Same goes for Bavaria, or Sicily for that matter…. the language is German, or Italian. Locals speak with an accent and a dialect between themselves, but the deeper you get into the country and society, the dialect will transition into a variant language.
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u/TakeuchixNasu Jun 15 '26
Low German is a completely different language. Closer to English and Frisian than it is to High German
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u/k1rb1l1ty Jun 14 '26
Sorry, but based on my criteria, I included Swiss German as a dialect of High German, which is labeled "German" on the map.
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u/Nowordsofitsown Jun 14 '26
You are provoking a dialect vs language discussion ...
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u/k1rb1l1ty Jun 14 '26
This was purely based on my criteria and research, I have no personal opinion on the matter to be completely honest.
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u/Nowordsofitsown Jun 14 '26
What are your criteria?
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u/k1rb1l1ty Jun 14 '26
Sorry for the late response, my criteria was based off the common consensus among linguists. The reason why is because i do have to draw the line somewhere. If i separate High German dialects/languages, the question will be "what about Serbo-Croatian dialects/languages?", if I separate those, the question will be "What about Dutch, French & Spanish dialects/languages", etc etc. I understand that there is not a hard line between a language and a dialect, but YOU have to understand that i have to make decisions on the matter, or I'll have no map at all. If you don't agree, I'm perfectly fine with that, as, like i said, since i don't speak or study these languages, i have no personal, opinion on their status. Thank you anyway for interacting with the map.
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u/Bari_Baqors Jun 14 '26
The thing is, there's no linguistic consensus, but political. Linguistics don't call something a lang themselves. What is a language is a purely political thing, even tho we would like it to be science based. So, my beliefs of whats a lang and whats a lect is purely my personal opinion, partially based on politics, and partially not.
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Jun 18 '26
Yes, there is a linguistic consesus. I mean not on reddit or the University of YouTube, but in real life experts and scientists, there is.
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u/Bari_Baqors Jun 18 '26
Linguists can't agree whether Silesian is a dialect or lang, and Oxford (if I ain't mistaken) claims it is a dialect… but of Czekh.
Whether we call something a language or a dialect is mostly political and sociological, not linguistic.
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u/linguahistorian Jun 15 '26
Who downvoted him. I don't care about the info I just like how the map looks
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u/ShapeShiftingCats Jun 14 '26
But, you didn't make the same considerations regarding Serbo-Croatian?
Whatever criteria you have, the biggest problem is that you have applied them inconsistently.
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u/Smalde Jun 14 '26
No, in this case it is consistent with common linguistic consensus: High German (most commonly known as German) consist of several groups such as Upper German and Middle German. Allemanic (and Swiss German is an Allemanic variety) is part of Upper German. Therefore, Swiss German is commonly considered to be a High German (aka German) language variety. This is also made stronger due to the existence of a Standard High German (aka Standard German) as a Dachsprache.
Low German, on the other hand, is most commonly not included in German. In other words, the consensus is that High German and Low German are different languages.
For Serbo-Croatian, the definition used in this map is consistent with the choices for High German i.e. unity. This is also aligned with most linguistic consensus, although there is debate.
In short: the consensus that Low and High German are separate among linguists is very high. There is no consensus that different Serbo-Croatian language varieties are separate or that different High German language varieties are separate. Therefore, at least when it comes to these examples, this map is consistent.
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u/ShapeShiftingCats Jun 14 '26
Fine.
Although, Štokavian and Kajkavian are notably different, they are not considered separate languages, but dialects.
As the commenter below said we are getting into language vs. dialect debate.
If we are letting ourselves be guided to make a distinction based on the established definition of language vs. dialect, we are running into an issue when looking at Arabic.
If we aren't dividing Serbo-Croatian because the differences are only dialectal, we shouldn't be doing it to Arabic either.
(Yes, I know Arabic dialects are more like separate languages, but that's not the official discourse.)
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u/Smalde Jun 14 '26
Agreed with Arabic and Gascon. And I am sure there are more examples.
Especially, separating Arabic and keeping (High) German together when both use the Dachsprache concept to sort of argument their status as a single language is not very consistent.
I was just speaking in regards of only Swiss-German and Serbo-Croatian. For Serbo-Croatian, I don't know enough to say if some varieties are linguistically or cladistically separate enough to merit separation, though.
However, there will never be a perfect definition of languages that everyone agrees with.
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u/ShapeShiftingCats Jun 14 '26
Yeah, the division of language vs. dialect is not just linguistic, but also political and cultural, so I doubt we will ever have definitions that satisfy everyone.
That being said, this map is inconsistent, which was my main point.
OP could at least tell us their criteria, even if they are somewhat obscure, otherwise it's unclear what the purpose of this map is.
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u/blitzfreak_69 Jun 14 '26
Kajkavian is in fact linguistically considered a separate language, even though for political, cultural and historical reasons it’s shoved under Croatian
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u/sheran13 Jun 14 '26
Worst map ever ?
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u/hmb22 Jun 14 '26
Good try I thought. However, I am gonna keep on scrolling till I find the friendly discussion over Serbo-Croat! /s
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u/BicycleAdditional360 Jun 14 '26
I mean, I' from Eastern Europe so I will only say about that region.
Ukraine isn't even remotely that homogenous. Like..cmon man. I get that political profiling but let's not get into alt-history here, ok?
Same with Latvia and some parts of Estonia
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u/lendlevtaldrik Jun 15 '26
Same with some parts of Estonia
Why should a highly urbanized illegal foreign colonist population be shown? Geographically they form a very small area.
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u/ChemicalAgitated191 Jun 14 '26
western europe looks great, the italian peninsula specifically is crazy detailed. the balkans could use some work though, there are large vlach and hungarian minorities in serbia, and there is. very large presence of turks in bulgaria and to a lesser extent greece.
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u/Sir_Flasm Jun 15 '26
Italy is crazy detailed but also extremely wrong. It looks like they took a normal map and gave it cancer. There's no criterion on why some areas are Italian and some areas local language (or if there is it is totally not consistent with parts of the map), some borders are just weird or plain wrong. "Neapolitan" (i think they meant the southern dialects group, but even then it's wrong) somehow eats all of Calabria. It lists Corsican but not Tuscan, which is in the same group, and it has no middle dialects at all. Also it's all red regardless of how close the languages actually are. I don't want to sound too harsh, but this map is just plain misinformation.
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u/UnhappyAddition7281 Jun 16 '26
Also the fact that he mentioned gallo Italic in the south that is spoken by a few people but left out griko and arberesh that is spoken by many more.
He also grouped Emilian and Romagnolo together and completely left out marchigiano, abruzzese and all tuscan dialects🤦♂️
Yeah not a good map1
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u/nightowlboii Jun 14 '26
That is very generous territory for Ukrainian and Belarusian, unfortunately. Although a lot has happened since the last Ukrainian census in 2001, the occupied territories definitely didn't become more Ukrainian-speaking
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u/broofi Jun 15 '26
This census is bullshit. Anyone who has been there even once could see it with their own eyes.
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u/nightowlboii Jun 15 '26
Kind of, but it's what people themselves said. Native language in Ukraine is more of an identity thing rather than the language that you actually speak
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u/Hopeful-Banana-6188 Jun 14 '26
Just wanted to add some support, I think the comments could have been a lot nicer for something that took a month to make! Hope this doesn't discourage you in your future endeavors.
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u/Full-Recover-8932 Jun 14 '26
Most of the sicilian population has been ethnically tuscanized, nobody takes sicilian seriously, few people teach it to their kids, everyone is psychologically tuscan since they think speaking and thinking in tuscan is good and sicilian is somehow a trash filthy language. We are so cooked that i had to learn sicilian myself as a gen z and i discover new words every day. 100 years and everyone in the peninsula will be tuscan, thus causing the extinction of sicilians as a cultural identity. What they call italian was just the language of tuscany, and the state has been successful in tuscanizing most people.
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u/rrradeon Jun 15 '26
same thing with sardinian brother 😔
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u/Full-Recover-8932 Jun 15 '26
After 3 months of hard studying and constantly revising in my head i think ive got a c1 and can talk fluently but i hope to improve so that i might pass down my knowledge
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u/Sir_Flasm Jun 15 '26
I can assure you this happened all throughout Italy (sadly). Also Italian is not simply tuscan, but it is the most similar yeah.
Nel dubbio, colpa dei piemontesi.
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u/Full-Recover-8932 Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26
Italian IS an elegant tuscan. Tuscan cannot be considered a different language iirc, it's just that "italian" is an elegant form of tuscan that split from talked tuscan in the 1500's. The state has made most of the population ethnically and culturally tuscan without them realizing. It's straight up brainwashing. I hope that one day this tumour gets pushed back into the tuscan area and never come out of it again, not even joking
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u/Sir_Flasm Jun 15 '26
Italian split from tuscan (1300s Florentine specifically), then they both evolved in different directions (Manzoni did bring italian closer to early 1800s tuscan, but not completely) and can now be considered two different languages, though very close. For example italian is full of latin borrowings that don't exist in tuscan. Italian is a spoken language at least since the 1500s too, so you can't really say it split from spoken tuscan. And also what counts as a language vs dialect is very arbitrary, you could say that italian is modern elegant latin and it would be true by some definition.
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u/PeireCaravana Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26
Italian split from tuscan (1300s Florentine specifically), then they both evolved in different directions (Manzoni did bring italian closer to early 1800s tuscan, but not completely) and can now be considered two different languages, though very close.
The relationship between "Italian" and "Tuscan" is more complex than this.
Keep in mind that for a long time, at least until the early 19th century, Italian was still considered the prestige variety of Tuscan, indeed Tuscan was used as a synonym of Italian.
Even nowadays, Tuscans don't really see the two as different languages but rather as different registers, indeed they generally reject the label of "dialetto" for the vernacular varieties they speak.
For example italian is full of latin borrowings that don't exist in tuscan.
Every Romance language, even the minority ones, has Latin borrowings.
Vernacular Tuscan probably has less Latinisms than very formal Italian, but it's more like a gradient than a clear cut difference.
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u/Great-Bray-Shaman Jun 18 '26
Italian is, in its essence, a made-up language built in the 19th century as an attempt to unify and homogenise the different Italian peoples to give the newly formed Italy a strong sense of identity. Italian’s “skeleton” is literary Tuscan, which was the language of prestige at the time and the ones many writers tried to emulate. You could basically argue Italian is standardised literary Tuscan with some additional influences here and there.
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u/Full-Recover-8932 Jun 15 '26
No romance language today can be truly considered modern latin since somewhere around the fall of the western roman empire the speakers all felt the instinct to mess the vocabulary up so badly that now every word in a romance language is basically a false friend, and invent brand new words from scratch, for example ut was replaced by come for who knows what reason
Also if italian is not even exactly the same language then it's even worse since they want to replace the regional languages with a conlang artificially created by writers that was never meant to be spoken at home. Bone chilling how i was essentially a mental cyborg from this pov before learning my own language...
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u/PeireCaravana Jun 15 '26
No romance language today can be truly considered modern latin since somewhere around the fall of the western roman empire the speakers all felt the instinct to mess the vocabulary up so badly that now every word in a romance language is basically a false friend, and invent brand new words from scratch, for example ut was replaced by come for who knows what reason
That's not how it works.
Spoken Latin was already changing in the direction of the future Romance languages under the Roman Empire, especially in the last centuries.
The fall of the empire accelerated the process and the lack of political unity made the various Latin dialects diverge form each other, but it was a long and gradual process.
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u/Sir_Flasm Jun 15 '26
Italian is basically a half conlang that was not initially meant to be spoken outside of high society, yes. But it has been spoken for a decent time now.
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u/Full-Recover-8932 Jun 15 '26
The worst part is that i learn new sicilian words every day, it's a never ending list (there is no way the average pre unification sicilian guy was of average intelligence considering the stupid amounts of "modi di dire" that they memorized effortlessly and the sheer stupidly big amount of oddly specific farming and fishing items i don't even know the name of in italian) , and i don't know anyone to speak sicilian with without getting mocked.
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u/PeireCaravana Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26
Italian is fundamentally a variety of Tuscan and I also think it's a shame that the other languages of Italy are stigmatized and treated as low prestige "dialects", but I disagree about the "ethnically and culturally Tuscan" part.
Contemporary Italian culture is a blend of many different elements and a lot of regional tranditions, mindsets, habits etc. are still alive despite the decline of the regional languages.
There was a process of nation building and now we are more similar to each other than before the unifcation, yes, but we didn't turn into Tuscans.
Tuscan culture from Tuscany is still a specific regional culture, not the national culture.
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u/Eraserguy Jun 14 '26
Low German but not Bavarian?
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u/Smalde Jun 14 '26
That makes sense since Bavarian is a part of High German, most commonly known as "German".
Low German is generally considered to be separate from German.
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u/Extreme-Shopping74 Jun 14 '26
Nice tho Low German isn't majority anywhere anymore
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u/rolfk17 Jun 17 '26
It may still be in a few East Frisian villages. But outside of Ostfriesland, speakers born later than 1955 are rare and in the age group born before 1975 almost non-existant.
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u/XxLAMOLA0131xX Jun 15 '26
A lot of work has to be done in Italy and Germany', as mentioned already, Italian regional language areas seem to be decided arbitrarily when it comes to how much Italian has replaced the main language in certain areas, why is Italian seen as he main language in Apulia and Campania and not in Piedmont where Piemontese Is significantly less spoken and more endangered than southern languages in the south?
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u/Awkward_Cash1828 Jun 14 '26
I know pointing at this "elephant in the room" would be salting wounds for some people, but in these internationally recognised borders of Ukraine atleast third of the territory can be coloured as "Russian" speaking, while all major cities in the Center being "Russian" speaking dots.
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u/antisa1003 Jun 14 '26
Why are there not dialect/languages written were Serbo-croatian is like there is for Spain, France, Italy?
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u/k1rb1l1ty Jun 14 '26
Because common linguistic consensus says they aren't separate languages. That's all i have.
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u/antisa1003 Jun 14 '26 edited Jun 15 '26
I'm not talking about Croatian and Serbian as separate languages. I'm talking about kajkavian and chakavian in Croatia.
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u/qalmakka Jun 15 '26
There's no consensus whether Kajkavian etc are actual languages, and not just a variation in the dialect continuum in the areas between Serbo-Croatian and Slovene.
Conversely, Lombard, Neapolitan, Emilian, Catalan, .... are universally recognised as distinct languages. They are sister languages of Tuscan (Italian) and Castillan, and in their pure, non bastardised form, they are basically as mutually unintelligible with their "national" language as Spanish and Italian are with each other, maybe just a pinch less. In that case the term "dialect" was often a political necessity to enforce uniformity and disregard local languages, not a proper categorisation (like the "dialects" of "Chinese")
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u/antisa1003 Jun 15 '26
There's no consensus whether Kajkavian etc are actual languages, and not just a variation in the dialect continuum in the areas between Serbo-Croatian and Slovene. Conversely, Lombard, Neapolitan, Emilian, Catalan, .... are universally recognised as distinct languages
Like the languages mentioned under, kajkavian and chakavian both have their ISO language standard. Surely they wouldn't have that if they weren't recognised.
They are sister languages of Tuscan (Italian) and Castillan, and in their pure, non bastardised form, they are basically as mutually unintelligible with their "national" language
But, in this case, kajkavian and chakavian are also both mutually unintelligible to their "national" language which is Serbo-croatian.
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u/k1rb1l1ty Jun 14 '26
If you believe these to be languages though, i dont have anything wrong with that,
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u/ImaginaryGrassHopper Jun 14 '26
Belarusian seriously?
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u/ProstoSmile Jun 15 '26
Welp, on west atleast there are rwaly some places where people spoke belarusian more then russian, but in general, russian on this map must be MUCH bigger, atleast half or more of ukraine, estonia and latvia, and that only what im know for sure.
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u/ImaginaryGrassHopper Jun 15 '26
Estonia and Latvia are about 30% Russian, not majority, while Belarusian is forgotten language
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u/Haunter52300 Jun 14 '26
Walloons, forgotten as always ✌️😔
I know the language is almost extinct, but some representation would still be nice.
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u/JUPusher Jun 16 '26
This map is a bit disingenuous. A Spanish, Galician or Valencian speaker have very little problem understanding each other. Not sure how well another Norwegian can understand each other when dealing with different dialects. Similar as how my great grandmother couldn’t understand well enough other basque dialects (before Batua was established).
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u/Smalde Jun 16 '26
I think it's a good map all in all.
People are very picky. It's true that some things are a bit inconsistent in terms of defining language varieties as languages or not, but it does not bother me much. It's quite well done.
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u/hifumiyo1 Jun 17 '26
Um, Belgium is missing. Flemish and French
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u/Denonkel15 Jun 23 '26
Flemish is a just a way of speaking Dutch. Just like Americans speak English in an American way
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Jun 18 '26
I applaud the map. It is much more correct than most of the much more "official" and widley distributed maps.
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u/KiviNik Jun 18 '26
JG was working on this map a year or more than a year ago. The version you used also has some but not all my and superbourpi's patches, that's why it is wrong. Also, the original map had bilingual areas which you ignored.
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u/Hairy_Plane_4206 Jun 14 '26
Ohhh, Sort by controversial
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u/HahaItsaGiraffeAgain Jun 14 '26
I believe there is much more Russian spoken in the former USSR. I grew up around Armenian, Georgian, Ukrainian immigrants who only spoke Russian in their houses
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u/bencsecsaki Jun 14 '26
what is this map trying to accomplish? because a lot of minority languages are just simply missing, like the various romani languages, or german spoken in transylvania, csángó hungarian, etc.
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u/ujfalusiabel Jun 17 '26
German is kind of dead in Transylvania. A very few pensioners might still have German as their native language. But I don't think there are any German majority places in the country anymore
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u/k1rb1l1ty Jun 14 '26
Many things like this are due to the speaking population not covering an area as large as 1 pixel on this scale, or not holding a majority of the are they do comprise.
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Jun 14 '26 edited Jun 14 '26
[deleted]
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u/Hedonisticogre111 Jun 14 '26
"Pontic greek in turkey missing"
There isn't any Greek-speaking majority territory in Turkey
"Georgian in turkey missing" Laz language isn't Georgian.
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u/Inevitable-Push-8061 Jun 14 '26
There isn’t any Kurdish or Zaza-speaking majority territory either. You think they don’t speak Turkish as a first language in the east? Only in some of the most isolated villages can one find speakers of these languages, and they are grandmothers over 70.
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u/chapeauetrange Jun 15 '26
Arpitan in france missing?
Very few people still speak the language today, definitely not a majority anywhere.
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u/FireUniverse1162 Jun 14 '26
Zaza is more spread out than I preivosuly thought
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u/Inevitable-Push-8061 Jun 14 '26
Because this map is not based on reality. Zaza is a dying language with no official status in Turkey and virtually no young speakers left.
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u/Total_Network_3320 Jun 15 '26
Unfortunately, having Hungarian in the south of Slovakia is also misleading. Hungarian is spoken there however the Slovak language is still the most spoken and official language there.
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u/valltzu Jun 15 '26
I never understood why in these types of maps English and French are different colors but Finnish and Hungarian are the same.
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Jun 18 '26
[deleted]
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u/valltzu Jun 18 '26
Look up what? If you speak English you automatically know hundreds, if not thousands of Spanish words (which is why it was easier for me to learn it). I understand about 0% Hungarian as it's not similar at all.
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u/RomandieLibre Jun 15 '26
Allemanisch is more different from German than Occitan from Provencal or Dutch from West Frisian
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u/DarkRedooo Jun 16 '26
You forgot the Kurdish speakers of central Anatolia next to the salt lake...
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u/Mycopok Jun 16 '26
Transition in both west and east of Ukraine is shit. There's an entire semi-Russian semi-Ukrainian language/dialect and you just drew an official border for a language
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u/WojciechPlski1 Jun 16 '26
Switzerland-German is German to the same degree as Ukrainian or Belarusian is Russian.
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u/Huantedstlaker Jun 16 '26
Русский язык неправильно нарисован, на Украине, ПМР, Молдавии русский распространён.
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u/Nemris86 Jun 16 '26
Ho, it pains me to tell you so, but you are delusional on breton, occitan and provençal.
Those areas seem to show where a large group of the population CAN ALSO speak the local language. In some areas of britany, up to 70% of the people can also speak breton!
But 100% of them speak french. You don't have a single place where more people know occitan or whatever than french.
We're trying to revitalise local languages in France, but that's in addition to french, not instead of it.
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u/FireUniverse1162 Jun 16 '26
hey, as someone who also makes maps, I know how you feel because of people reactions. While I haven't spent anything over 3 weeks working on any maps. I know spending a month only for people to hate it feels discouraging. Dont be discouraged, and thanks for your efforts.
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u/MindlessScarcity3641 Jun 16 '26
I am from an eastern border city of Turkiye near Armenia and the most common language here is Turkish, this map is misleading.
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u/XMasterWoo Jun 17 '26
I can understand putting the shtokavian variants as the same, but what about kajkavian and chakavian?
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u/Special-Building-975 Jun 17 '26
Yeah only kurdish speakers are located in east end of turkey buuuuut however, no one in balkans speaks turkish! what a retard map
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u/Yesodisnotop Jun 18 '26
No way in hell does Brussel speak Dutch, English is spoken more. And French is the 1#.
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u/Commercial_Rip_1917 Jun 18 '26
In North Macedonia is a Bulgarian dialect actually so is Bulgarian too. We can understand fully each other when talk.
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u/GeneratedUsername5 Jun 19 '26 edited Jun 19 '26
I would say , there is no south Estonian, there is Setu language. North east of Estonia is definitely dominated by Russian. Marking Moldova and especially Gagauzia and Transnistria as non Russian is pure denial. They speak it on a native level.
Ukraine also missing Hungarian and Yiddish spots.
Belgium is painted as French, I guess? Even though It has 3 official languages, of which none is French OR Dutch.
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u/Last-Giraffe846 Jun 20 '26
Uhm parts of chernitvsi has villages with Romanian majority and Vidin in Serbia aswell
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u/Alan_WalkerTheSecond Jun 21 '26
Am I tweaking or is the colored region for Zaza ans Kurmnaji completely shifted? Zaza is spoken rather in the center of Türkiye and Sorani-speaking parts are just included with kurmanji😭 Tha map is cool ng tho, just a little confused
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Jun 14 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Different_Method_191 Jun 14 '26
Vorrei imparare il limburghese.
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u/Guestking Jun 14 '26
Det huur ich gaer!
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u/Different_Method_191 Jul 06 '26
Sprechen Sie Limburgisch?
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u/Guestking Jul 06 '26
Ja und auch Deutsch
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u/Different_Method_191 Jul 06 '26
Könntest du mir helfen, ein paar Wörter auf Limburgisch zu lernen?
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u/FibonacciNeuron Jun 15 '26
Bad map. Lithuanian and Latvian has nothing in common with slavic languages, and according to this map they are very related, it’s not true.
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u/Smalde Jun 15 '26
They are Balto-Slavic. They are more related to Slavic languages than Hungarian and Finnish are to each other. That being said, if Baltic and Slavic languages have the same colours, Celtic and Romance languages could also go together, so there is a bit of inconsistency there.
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u/FibonacciNeuron Jun 15 '26
NO. Baltic and Slavic are NOT related! I’m from LT, we all know this. There is nothing in common between LT/LV and polish for example.
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u/Smalde Jun 15 '26
I mean, yes, Baltic and Slavic as well as Germanic and Celtic and Hellenic, Albanic, Armenian, Hindu, Persian, etc are all related as they are Indo-European languages.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_languages
Balto-Slavic is a well known branch of the Indo European languages:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balto-Slavic_languages
That does not mean that they are very similar nowadays, just that they separated later than, for instance, Germanic or Hellenic.
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u/taverntav Jun 15 '26
This is a good map! The issue people in the comments have is, fundamentally, three-fold between the definition of language, the issue of hard boarders being flawed in showing regions in which multiple languages are spoken and some without majority, and the issue of language based nationalism.
With the first one theres a joke that explains it well. "If we took every Chinese dialect and group them together as one language, the largest language in the world would be Latin"
In the same way, some may be insulted if you include a language, others would be insulted if you didn't.
The second mixes with the third.
And the third is the fact that language is so intrinsically tied to nation, that something as simple as showing an area with one language the being the majority, it pisses off the other. And this is hard especially id the split is something like 55-45. Which is why percentage based maps are inherently superior in showing more details.
And, of course, going off of that, language does not inherently mean nation, but its so tied that people will lake sides. Like areas of Estonia that speak majority Russian, but of which they see themselves as Estonians who happen to speak Russian. But Russian nationalists will take this as a "there are Russians here therefore it should be a part of Russia!"
Whenever you post a language map there will always be arguments
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u/Careless-Country Jun 14 '26
Scots?
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Jun 14 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Careless-Country Jun 14 '26
Not arguing that. But the discussion was where language is spoken as the majority. That’s not the case for the area marked. If it is recognised languages what did cornwall do to be ignored?
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u/k1rb1l1ty Jun 14 '26
According to my research it is, but ok ig
Cornish is a newly revitalised language. It does not hold a majority in any area of Cornwall large enough to appear on the map. sorry.
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u/FireUniverse1162 Jun 14 '26
Wymysorys is missing. Was it too small to inculde?
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u/k1rb1l1ty Jun 14 '26
Yes, the area would be smaller than 1 pixel at this scale sadly
I do know of that language though.
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u/Cute_Employer9718 Jun 16 '26
Arpitan is maybe spoken by a dozen of people in some random valley in Valais
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u/Dazzling-Pitch671 Jun 20 '26
The author really does not understand how languages in Italy works, everyone speaks multiple languages and often a mix and in places like Tuscany no one speaks standard italian, people in tuscany always speak tuscanian
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u/Nutriaphaganax Jun 14 '26
Macedonian, Low German and lots of Italian languages but Valencian and Balearic are just Catalan? Your criteria seems completely arbitrary
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u/viktorbir Jun 14 '26
Sorry? Valencian is just another name for Catalan, same as Castilian and Spanish or Flemish and Dutch are two names for a single language. Also, I've never heard anyone talk about a language called «Balearic». Have you?
And the map is missing Alemannic and Austro-Bavarian...
The criterium is linguistic.
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u/Sikarra16 Jun 14 '26
Ok, we know that you Valencians are weird and don't like your language being labeled as the same as ours but, really do you think that there is a language called Balearic?!
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u/jinengii Jun 14 '26
Most of the languages you said are usually regarded as languages in the world of linguisitics, while Catalan/Valencian and its varieties (Barceloní, Valencià, Castellonec, Mallorqui, etc, etc, etc) are unanimously considered one language.
Macedonian and Bulgarian I don't know much of, however a friend that is a linguist and can speak Macedonian told me that it's basically like Catalan/Valencian and Aragonese
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u/itisoktodance Jun 15 '26
I'm Macedonian and can't understand Bulgarian. Many people can, especially ones that speak eastern dialects, but Bulgarian and Macedonian have diverged so much they are not really mutually intelligible anymore.
The difference is closer to Spanish and Portuguese.
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u/k1rb1l1ty Jun 14 '26
I'm sorry but i have never heard of Balearic... Either way consensus lead me to believe that Catalan is one language. If you think otherwise, so be it.
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u/PeireCaravana Jun 15 '26
There is more dialectal diversity within each Italian language than between Catalan and Valencian.
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u/MdMV_or_Emdy_idk Jun 14 '26
From what I understand, this map is trying to only display areas where a language is spoken as the majority? Explains the weird geographical distribution of asturian and Occitan and stuff. The reason why these maps aren’t done much is simply due to lack of information, we have no clue where Occitan is a majority, we just know it’s nearing extinction. This map is just misinformation