The distribution of the Irish language in 1871

The distribution of the Irish language in 1871 - From E.G. Ravenstein, “On the Celtic Languages of the British Isles: A Statistical Survey”, in Journal of the Statistical Society of London, vol. 42, no. 3, (September, 1879)

793 x 967

‘Bearing in mind most of the red areas are very sparsely populated (and were at the time of the map, too) does anybody have an estimate as to what percentage of the total population would fall into the various red and pink categories?

They weren’t as sparsely populated back then though. Yes it’s post famine, but the depopulation of the West took place over 150 years’

Main ethno-linguistic groups in Europe (1899)

Main ethno-linguistic groups in Europe (1899)

1152 x 1166

‘As a berber, what made me relief is that the map depicted North Africa accurately, ethnic arabs are a microscopic minority here, there are arabized berbers who kept berber customs to an extent, and berbers who kept speaking their languages, the idea of arab north africa started in the 30s with the rise of panarabism, and the arabization policy done by algerian and moroccan governments to erase berber identity’

Linguistic structure of Montenegro by settlements (2011)

Linguistic structure of Montenegro by settlements (2011)

1911 x 2388

‘This is a linguistic map of Montenegro according to the 2011 population census. Data is according to settlements

Do the “Serbian” and “Montenegrin” responses reflect any linguistic difference, or just a dispute over what the language should be called?

No. Montenegrin is purely Serbian with a regional accent

You mean Serbo-Croatian. Serbian is yet another dialect’

Polish speakers in Prussia and northern Germany according to the census of 1905 and 1910

Polish speakers in Prussia and northern Germany according to the census of 1905 and 1910

100024 x 6960

‘why did they get Danzig?

They didn’t get the city itself, it was run by League of Nations with the Polish mandate (and the city officials certainly didn’t let the Poles run it like they would like to, they controlled some aspects of the city but it had it’s own parliment and currency, Poles controlled the post, maintained a military garrison and were ment to dictate the economics of the city state, but it failed soon due to the toll war with Germany), also the coastline had no Poles because it was majority Kashubian at the time (really, the Polish corridor was mostly rural, full of these Kashubian speaking villages, with some resort towns pre ww1) and the minority is still present there to this day’

Percent with the Urdu language as mother tongue in Pakistan (2017)

Percent with the Urdu language as mother tongue in Pakistan (2017). Urdu is the national language and lingua franca of Pakistan

3210 x 2010

‘How come Urdu is the national language of Pakistan if so few people speak it natively? Is it because of the influence of the Mughal empire?

Pakistan is an ethnically heterogeneous and multilingual country. There are a lot of languages with a million+ speakers and gets even more complex with the inclusion of regional dialects. We needed a single language that could be used by all communities to talk with eachother and that was Urdu. It didn’t give an unfair advantage to any other group and didn’t make others feel like they were being cheated.

For example, a Punjabi and Baluch are speaking. They can’t expect the other to know their native language so they’d speak in Urdu. That’s why our founders chose it.

Mughals didn’t really use Urdu when they were in power so it isn’t related to them. It certainly was regarded as the language of the educated by the time of partition though.

Additional info:

The British picked Urdu as the official language since locals were more comfortable with using it (than Persian) and Urdu was a standardized language (quite rare among South Asian languages at the time).

The eventual Hindi split led to Urdu becoming a symbolic language for Muslims, which obviously meant Pakistani leaders were more prone to use it.

And lastly, Urdu is extremely easy to learn for any Indo-Aryan language native speaker. It’s the easiest Indo-Aryan language out there, and its heavy use of Persian also makes it the ideal language for Iranic language speakers to learn.

I wouldn’t know how you could classify anything as ‘easiest’

Easiest since it’s essentially a manufactured language, and you’re right, convenience also plays a huge factor.

But if we dig deeper into the origins of Urdu, it’s clear that this is a language that was always meant to be a bridge, rather than someone’s native tongue. The extreme and often forceful Persianization of North India led to Urdu becoming sort of a compromise language.

The urban legend (just clarifying since this isn’t a factual retelling of history) is that Urdu was formed in military barracks. Soldiers from all different parts of India and the Persian sort of developed the Urdu language to easily communicate with each other. It had elements, structures, and vocabulary of Indo-Aryan and Iranic languages.

It’s hard to explain why Urdu is easy, but it boils down to the fact that it’s a language that’s meant to be similar to others around it. If you, as an English speaker, pick up French. Your first dive into the language would be the words that are similar to those in English. From there, you’ll form cues, context, and more to start learning the whole language.

If you speak an Indo-Aryan or an Iranic language, you’ll immediately pick up these cues in almost every sentence of Urdu.’

Dominant mother language in Slovakia by municipality, based on the 2021 census

Dominant mother language in Slovakia by municipality, based on the 2021 census

1226 x 670

‘Wondered why the Hungarian-Slovak border doesn’t track further north on the left/west and then looked up on another map -the southern border there is the Danube.

Geopolitics. The goal of trianon was to dissolve Austria-Hungary forever and create a set of countries having more or less equal geopolitical potential so it would be harder to recreate the Austrian-Hungarian state, one of the two engines of central powers.

Hungary had been punished in 1920 as part of the Habsburg monarchy which has lost the I world war along with Germany and the whole state has been partitioned.

Also an argument against Hungary had been that they were pushing policies of hungarization on territories with other nations majority.

I’ve also heard that the southern strip had been given to Czechoslovakia because in post-WW1 times Slovakia hadn’t had enough of rural terrain to feed themselves. Especially that in those times Czechoslovakia was fighting with Poland over Trans-Olza where the only trains from Czechia went trough and the outcome of that conflict had been unknown yet.

Also, Romania had been rewarded for their military intervention ending 3month lasting communist Hungary state in 1919.’

The distribution of Iranian languages

The distribution of Iranian languages

9993 x 5801

‘Is the use of the word Persian or Farsi a political statement about the current government? Who is more likely to say Farsi instead of Persian?

It became trendy in the late 20th century to call it “Farsi” – but to my knowledge, it’s not a politicized question. Both the Academy of Persian Language and Literature (Iran’s language academy) and the Encyclopedia Iranica (supported by America’s National Endowment for the Humanities) have said that “Persian” is the proper name for the language in English.’

Proportion of people who can speak Scots or Gaelic in Scotland (2011)

Proportion of people who can speak Scots or Gaelic in Scotland (2011)

1380 x 2048

‘I’ve heard that people in that big white area – the recently Gaelic part of the Highlands – have a less pronounced Scottish accent than those in the rest of the country, since there’s no established variety of Scots there.

That’s basically the same in the Nordics too. Those areas which historically had a sami population don’t barely have what could be called a dialect which is different from standard swedish or standard bokmål. Some linguistics traits you for example only find in Finnmark and the posher parts of Oslo in Norway due to the sami population got forced to speak norwegian, which obviously was bokmål/riksmål and not the local norwegian dialects. Same in Sweden with rikssvenska instead og bondska. And I would guess the same goes for finnish in the areas which historicaly have been populated by sami or swedes. Though I guess this is a trend which is to be expected. Spain and France may have the same trends too, though idk.

Look up Irish (gaelic), and you’ll see how it just collapses aswell. All the celtic languages have declined alot the latest 200 years except kinda welsh (and Cornish, but that was revived and is still in its rebirth, so going from 0 to a couple thousands is impressive, but still a very small language). Also, norn in Shetland basically died out in the 1940s. Like in the last native speaker died in the late 1800s, but a guy had grown up speaking it with his grandparents and still knew how to speak it until he died in WW2. So currently there’s an effort to bring back the language, as the shetlandic and also the Orkney dialect to a lesser extent have kept many remnants from the norn language of the vikings. I think that project will really attract alot of learners in the upcoming years, becoming a symbol of their norse identity and all that cultural reawekening they are currently undergoing especially on Shetland.’

Geographic distribution of the Bengali language in India and Bangladesh

Geographic distribution of the Bengali language in India and Bangladesh

2806 x 2080

‘Is there mutual intellibility to some extent between Bengali and Hindi?

(Native/good Bengali speaker, poor Hindi speaker)

Not really for the most part. My Hindi vocab is much smaller than my Bengali, so when I have to guess what the Hindi word is by knowing the Bengali word (think of English/French words with Latin roots), I can for some of the bigger/more complex words, but a lot of common words don’t even have a cognate, partially due to the Austroasiatic substratum in East Aryan languages.’

Rate in which the English language is spoken at home in Australia (2016)

Rate in which the English language is spoken at home in Australia (2016)

1810 x 1528

‘Interesting Northern Territory is lowest. Would that be due to migrant workers? Or Backpackers? Or more due to high percentage of indigenous communities and they speak their language at home? Or combination of all factors?

It is a combination of all factors. In Indigenous communities, a lot of people speak 4, 5, 6, or more Indigenous languages before speaking English. I have a lot of Greek friends who don’t usually speak in English unless they have to. Most immigrant children learn English in special learning programs at school.’

Languages of South Africa

Languages of South Africa - by Tomislav Addai

4073 x 3785

‘The trouble with this kind of map is that languages are spoken by people, not by land. The western half of South Africa is sparsely populated. In fact, Afrikaans is spoken by 13.5% of people, while English is spoken by 9.6%.. Both isiXhosa (16%) and isiZulu (22.7%) have more speakers than either European language.’

Most Common Spoken Languages in Inḍian States

Most Common Spoken Languages in Inḍian States

8752 x 5257

‘There are almost no native speakers of English (0.02%). Everyone speaks it as a second or third language

I would caution you from making a connection between mother tongue and first language. In big cities like Bangalore and Chennai, the rich and upper middle class usually send their children to English-medium schools, so their children often end up better at English than their mother tongue(they can speak both well, but reading and writing in their mother tongue is often poor since they don’t take it in school or only as a second language). However, even if they speak English fluently and are not as proficient in their mother tongue, they would never say English is their mother tongue’

Laos ethno-linguistic map

Laos ethno-linguistic map

1590 x 2000

‘One of my favorite places on this Earth. I’ve always read there are 3 types of Lao people. The ones that live at sea level, ones that live at mid-range elevation and ones that live on the mountain tops. Sticky rice is the common denominator’

‘My wife and I have spent several months in Laos. It’s easily one of our favourite places. We bought motorbikes and drove from Luang Prabang down to 4,000 islands, best trip we’ve ever done’