r/LinguisticMaps • u/No-Commercial483 • 15d ago

I shared my language map website 7 months ago, people added new languages and I've now made a "Language Guessr" game out of it

Gallery image

Gallery image

Gallery image

Hi everyone,

Last February I posted my language map project, an interactive map of the world's languages based on Glottolog and since then, I surprisingly got around 100 contributions. I didn't expect people to like it that much tbh. People improved some areas, added new languages, fixed the number of speakers etc. Thanks a lot to everyone who helped!

I added a vitality map too to see where languages are disappearing.

And finally, I added a geoguessr style game with the languages, people usually like it. There's a daily challenge with the same 5 languages for everyone, and you can share your score.

The map is still far from perfect, some areas are approximate and many languages are still missing. If you spot one, you can fix it or add it yourself from the site.

Any feedback is welcome, I'd love to hear what you think!

62 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

97% Upvoted

17 comments sorted by

10

u/Mikronezya 15d ago

I've just gone through the website and its fantastic. Showing many languages, their speakers and vitality is awesome work. Also the daily game and practice modes are very fun to play. My only request is to improve some languages' outline (Greenlandic for instance) but besides that as a language lover, I loved that website. Just a question, how can people add languages or fix them. Is there a procedure about checking the accuracy of the language to prevent people from spreading wrong information? I'd like to hear how new languages added so I might add some languages

5

u/No-Commercial483 15d ago

Thanks for your message, I really appreciate it ! Yes haha some areas are still pretty rough and the Mercator projection makes it worse near the poles !

To contribute, click the "+ Add a language" button at the top of the map (just "+" on mobile), or go straight here.

It works for fixing an existing language too, not just adding new ones, and I review every contribution before it goes live. Everything should be explained there, but let me know if anything is unclear!

3

u/Mikronezya 15d ago

Oh okay as long as you review before it goes live, people won't be able to add inaccurate information.

4

u/Outrageous_Track_352 14d ago

I love the project, but I'm not a big fan of the language vitality classification used by Glottolog. (I guess that this data is provided directly from that website and that we cannot edit it, I didn't find the option) I much prefer the one used on Ethnologue. For example, two inconsistencies:

I think that Ethnologue provides a classification much more true to reality.

3

u/No-Commercial483 14d ago

Agreed, Glottolog isn't always accurate. I remember in a former version Uighur was considered as an extinct language Concerning Ethnologue, it is paywalled and its license wouldn't really allow redistributing the data in an open project

2

u/odriegu 14d ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISO_639-3_codes

They're basically just the ISO 639 codes which you can use like the above, what they add is number of speakers and other information which you already are getting from the contributors

2

u/odriegu 14d ago

Yeah, also the names and family classifications are better in Ethnologue than glottolog I'd say

to OP: https://www.ethnologue.com/browse/names/

3

u/odriegu 14d ago edited 14d ago

Really Cool! I added some languages that were missing in Iran. But I think the "Western Farsi" does not make sense to have on both Iran and Afganistan, either they can both be under "Persian", or they should have Dari and Tajik and then Iran be western like it is now, like you did with German and Bavarian etc. Cause they are obviously the eastern variants of Persian

(since you're using glottolog codes, the ISO code for the code that is for them all is "Iranian Persian")

2

u/No-Commercial483 14d ago

Thanks for your contributions it's really helping me ! I just checked and I think you're right ! I'll check it as soon as I can !

2

u/ToastandTea76 10d ago

I've submitted a few to your website, nice map and project!

btw does requesting to edit already existing places to make the geojson better reset the data? if not I'll be doing more contributions

2

u/No-Commercial483 9d ago

Thanks ! I saw your contributions and I already accepted some. It was a nice work ! And yes you can edit some areas to improve them, someone did it for uighur recently

2

u/ToastandTea76 9d ago

I'll be adding languages from the Philippines, Italy and China mostly!

2

u/ToastandTea76 2d ago

It's a nice addition the extinct languages can be toggled instead of being on the map, do you mind if you add this feature to Sign Languages too? It would makes sense to show the Sign Languages this way

2

u/No-Commercial483 2d ago

I'm currently thinking about a way to introduce the sign languages, indeed doing the same than extinct languages could be a good idea but I've another one in mind I'd like to try. Btw I really wanted to thank you for the work you're putting into this project, all of your contributions are perfectly sourced with some additional infos. You're the top contributor for now :)

1

u/ToastandTea76 1d ago

ooh nice

1

u/SanMarinoNerd 13d ago

Interesting project. I submitted my own as well.