Show HN: I made a website that color-codes the world by language
languageworldmap.com
Show HN: I made a website that color-codes the world by language
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Re: Show HN: I made a website that color-codes the world by language
#2In my experience a lot of this is quite incomplete. Obviously this uses a dataset like "official languages" of each country.
For example, English would grt you very far in the Netherlands, but its not colored. Dutch can get you quite far in South Africa, but its not colored. English in particular should color most of the globe, except countries like Russia, France, and a few other blatant exceptions.
Re: Show HN: I made a website that color-codes the world by language
#3This is really awesome, thanks for sharing!
I'm from the US and I've traveled to ~10 countries which I didn't speak the native language.
In some countries the locals are able to communicate in English/Spanish, and in others, not so much. What would be interesting to see is what % (or an estimate) of the locals can communicate in one of the languages you know (that's probably a hard problem to solve and not sure if the data is readily available) vs whether it's the official language.
Re: Show HN: I made a website that color-codes the world by language
#4In my experience a lot of this is quite incomplete. Obviously this uses a dataset like "official languages" of each country. For example, English would grt you very far in the Netherlands, but its not colored. Dutch can get you quite far in South Africa, but its not colored. English in particular should color most of the globe, except countries like Russia, France, and a few other blatant exceptions.
Interesting, I had the same initial thought :)
Re: Show HN: I made a website that color-codes the world by language
#5In my experience a lot of this is quite incomplete. Obviously this uses a dataset like "official languages" of each country. For example, English would grt you very far in the Netherlands, but its not colored. Dutch can get you quite far in South Africa, but its not colored. English in particular should color most of the globe, except countries like Russia, France, and a few other blatant exceptions.
Maybe solid color for officially supported, striped/hashed for "unofficial but would get you pretty far"?
Re: Show HN: I made a website that color-codes the world by language
#6Some people might be surprised that you can communicate with the whole of Canada, in French.
But not Algeria?
Re: Show HN: I made a website that color-codes the world by language
#7I wonder why French doesn't show Morocco and Algeria? In both countries, some 30-50% of people speak French.
Re: Show HN: I made a website that color-codes the world by language
#8I wonder why French doesn't show Morocco and Algeria? In both countries, some 30-50% of people speak French.
Ah I see, these are just "official" languages. Otherwise probably the whole planet would be highlighted for English.
Re: Show HN: I made a website that color-codes the world by language
#9The problem with using official languages and only going country-level is it excludes minority languages that still have tens of millions of speakers across multiple countries.
Re: Show HN: I made a website that color-codes the world by language
#10In my experience a lot of this is quite incomplete. Obviously this uses a dataset like "official languages" of each country. For example, English would grt you very far in the Netherlands, but its not colored. Dutch can get you quite far in South Africa, but its not colored. English in particular should color most of the globe, except countries like Russia, France, and a few other blatant exceptions.
Agree and think the use of data on what languages are spoken and by how many people would help. This app would be vastly improved by the incorporation of more data in general. At least language differences in the administrative divisions of countries should be reflected. Entering Punjabi gets you all of India, which I am doubtful of. I wanted to see if Malayalam does as well, but it is not in the list. Entering French also gets you all of Canada rather than just Quebec and maybe pockets in New Brunswick and Manitoba. Cantonese is not in the list. It is good though and I don't mean to knock it, only to suggest how it could be extended.