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Show HN: I made a website that color-codes the world by language

languageworldmap.com

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Re: Show HN: I made a website that color-codes the world by language

#61

Post by Freak_NL »

wenderen wrote: post #60

Collecting some of the points other posters made: 1. Languages don't always neatly map to country borders. 2. Linguistically diverse / multi-ethnic countries can have multiple official languages, and some of those official languages are spoken only in a geographical subset of the country. 3. Languages can be mutually intelligible. Urdu and Hindi are mutually intelligible and you can get by speaking Urdu in most parts…

3½. Just because you speak passable German, doesn't mean you can always understand the Swiss (even when they speak Swiss German!).

Re: Show HN: I made a website that color-codes the world by language

#62

Post by blarghyblarg »

Today is the day that florianwueest learns that "spoken language" is actually a really controversial topic lol

Seriously though, I bet finishing up this project felt great, then posting it to HackerNews was a huge dopamine rush, and now... everybody's just pointing out issues left and right because they accidentally stepped on a dozen landmines that are irrelevant in day-to-day life for 99% of us but entirely relevant when you post to an audience of millions.

Re: Show HN: I made a website that color-codes the world by language

#64

Post by aodonnell2536 »

xwdv wrote: post #34

Crazy how physical safety in the United States is so low, makes sense these days as cars are ubiquitous and frequently in accidents, and people might kill you for economic or mental health reasons.

I’m not sure what it’s based off of, but it seems bogus to me to rank the USA at the same level as Mexico, and lower than many African countries.

Re: Show HN: I made a website that color-codes the world by language

#65

Post by didgeoridoo »

aodonnell2536 wrote: post #63

United States given the same physical safety level as Mexico and a lower level than most African countries (including South Africa)? What are you basing that off of?

It appears to be based on the Global Peace Index rating, wherein the United States rates juuust below... Haiti.

It has nothing to do with physical safety, obviously.

Re: Show HN: I made a website that color-codes the world by language

#66

Post by petesergeant »

You'll be easier understood speaking English than you will speaking Arabic in UAE. And trying to prefix "do you speak English?" before asking a question in Netherlands will get you a look like you asked an adult if they know how to tie their shoelaces.

Re: Show HN: I made a website that color-codes the world by language

#69

Post by chimeracoder »

srvmshr wrote: post #14

Almost the whole of Scandinavia speaks English as a second language, and yet English does not highlight any or the four countries. Most Scandinavian people might agree with this general observation that knowing little to no Nordic language can still get you by very comfortably in that region, although knowing the national language is a plus. Second, China speaks Mandarin and Cantonese (not available), and several reg…

> I am not even getting into India at this point.

I'm confused by how this data is being generated. For example, India is tagged with Punjabi, but somehow not Bengali, even though the latter is the second most widely spoken language in India, with about three times as many speakers.

Ironically, Punjabi would be way more useful in Pakistan, where it's actually the most common first language, but Pakistan is tagged only with Urdu (and no other language).

I'm also skeptical of the "physical safety" tags; they seem inconsistent as well in a way that's difficult to reconcile.

Re: Show HN: I made a website that color-codes the world by language

#70

Post by petesergeant »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #23
srvmshr wrote: post #14

Almost the whole of Scandinavia speaks English as a second language, and yet English does not highlight any or the four countries. Most Scandinavian people might agree with this general observation that knowing little to no Nordic language can still get you by very comfortably in that region, although knowing the national language is a plus. Second, China speaks Mandarin and Cantonese (not available), and several reg…

A decent proportion of young Scandinavians speak English. Not all of them, and it definitely doesn't extend as a generality to older people.

From Wikipedia[0]:

Norway: 90%; Sweden: 90%; Denmark 86%.

This is higher than Canada and a number of Anglophone Caribbean islands. Admittedly Finland is lagging at 75%, but we can also consider Iceland at 98%.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-s...

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