Translation Blog

Language maps

January 10, 2008

Three interesting language maps for you, courtesy of strange maps (via Language Log) and Wikipedia (thanks Xavier!).

Click on the images to go to the relevant articles.

World map showing the countries with the biggest number of languages. Papua New Guinea comes first with 823 languages, followed by Indonesia (726), Nigeria (505), India (387) and Mexico (288).

papua

A 1730 map of the languages of Europe using the beginning of the Lord's prayer.

oldphone

A recent map of the languages of Europe.

languagesofeurope

Posted by céline, in Culture, on January 10, 2008
Comments

There's some good discussion of the second map at LH:
http://www.languagehat.com/archives/002992.php

Posted by language hat on January 10, 2008 3:47 PM

Thanks for this, I had seen it, very interesting indeed, as ever on your blog. I had to credit LL as I spotted this before I visited your blog - LL is before LH in my RSS reader!

Posted by céline on January 10, 2008 3:56 PM

Eek! Looking at the simplified map of European language distribution, I see that Gascon (even under the guise of Franco-Provencal) has disappeared and there's no Occitan east of Languedoc - very unlikely I think. The bits of Italy (Aoasta etc) that are usually counted as Franco-Provencal are now showing as Francophone - again doubtful. Maybe it's my eyesight, but does it show Fruilia as a Romantsch speaking region? Not that it matters of course - the map is even more fun to argue about.

Posted by Jim on January 30, 2008 5:25 PM

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