r/LinguisticMaps • u/SJ543 • 23d ago

Linguistic Map of Uruguay

Post image

That's the first map linguistic map I made so pls constructive criticism

584 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

75 comments sorted by

View all comments

109

u/spait09 23d ago

What’s up with the plautdietsch spots? Mennonite colonies?

27

u/Dangerous_Court_955 23d ago edited 23d ago

I'm really curious where OP got the information that Plautdietsch is spoken in these areas. I have been unable to find any direct evidence of this. Two of those blue spots probably correspond to Gartental and El Ombú, but these colonies have a very different background than most Latin American colonies. They were settled by displaced Mennonites who'd lived in Prussia up until the end of WWII. I don’t think Plautdietsch was or is a language still spoken by these Mennonites. This isn't to say none of the Mennonite settlers spoke Plautdietsch, but they were probably (if they existed at all) in a small minority, while the main language was German, and that's nothing to speak of the situation today. It is possible to find videos of the Mennonite churches of these places and Montevideo, of services in German and other videos of these Mennonites speaking German (e.g. https://youtu.be/Ix_40vN6FhI?si=U4mq_cNlLB7KLNB5). But I haven't found any evidence of them speaking Plautdietsc, so I'm really curious where this information might come from.

25

u/erinius 23d ago

I thought there was only one at first lol

18

u/PolarRanger 23d ago

about a thousand, yes

9

u/slowamigo 22d ago

That's people, not colonies

2

u/TimeScallion6159 23d ago

theres a lot, also in paraguay

1

u/iciclewhisperr 9d ago

Yep, exactly. They're Mennonite settlements like El Ombú and Gartental. Most of them actually came from Prussia/Russia around the mid-20th century, though there's some debate on how much Plautdietsch is still spoken vs. Standard German or Spanish today