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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

#71

Post by 1-more »

masukomi wrote: post #22

two quick observations: 1. the US isn't included for Spanish, despite the fact that Spanish is the second most spoken language in the United States. Over 41 million people aged five or older speak Spanish at home. Spanish is also the most learned language other than English, with about six million students. Estimates range from 41 million to over 50 million native speakers, heritage language speakers, and second-lang…

> Esperanto which is quite possibly the language spoken in more countries than any other doesn't even exist. Sure with only around 2M speakers we're not the biggest language group, but we're probably the most internationally diverse.

Are there places in the world where you'd start a sentence with "Pardonu, ĉu vi parolas Esperanton?" when you walk into a shop or ask for directions?

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

#72

Post by macintux »

blarghyblarg wrote: post #62

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 relevan…

My first test was Spanish; when the U.S. didn't highlight, I knew the comment section was going to be a mess.

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

#73

Post by marginalia_nu »

petesergeant wrote: post #70
marginalia_nu wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I'd seriously call those numbers into question (living in Sweden). Maybe 90% are at an A1 or A2 level.

I'd say maybe 50% are fluent, and that's heavily slanted toward the younger side of the population curve.

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

#74

Post by kiliancs »

Languages don't map to countries. For example, I introduced Catalan, and:

- it highlighted all of Spain, even though Catalan is only spoken in some areas

- it didn't highlight Andorra, an country where the only official language is Catalan

- it didn't highlight parts of France and Sardinia where Catalan is also spoken (albeit not officially or with limited recognition)

I happened to run into Viggo Mortensen's card, which claims he speaks 4 languages. He is slow, but I'd say his Catalan is pretty functional! https://www.ccma.cat/catradio/alacarta/el-mati-de-catalunya-...

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

#75

Post by markussss »

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…

> 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.

Another thing this website miss out on is that, with goodwill on both parts, Scandinavians can usually communicate with other Scandinavians in different languages. I am Norwegian, and if I meet a Swede, we can just talk with each other. I can't talk Swedish fluently, but I can understand Swedish to such a degree that it's no problem to speak with a Swede who is speaking Swedish.

However, this relationship of understanding languages can be asymmetric, and it's not always as easy for a Swede to understand a Norwegian as it is for a Norwegian to understand a Swede.

Check out this video on asymmetric language understanding from NativLang for more about this! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E042GHlUgoQ

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

#76

Post by srvmshr »

markussss wrote: post #75
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…

> 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. Another thing this website miss out on is that, with goodwill on both part…

This is interesting & its factually true from personal experience. I feel Norwegian is a sister language but bit more complicated than Swedish. Since they have similar roots, the grammar structure is same & it is easy to follow some degree of either. However, the foreign influence on Swedish over ages, has made it phonetically simpler.

The asymmetry exists, but ideas interchange easy enough because of common roots (except Finnish which sounds like Hungarian surprisingly).

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

#77

Post by janalsncm »

OP, one way to get around the criticism would be to open sourced the database! That way, a lot of these (valid) comments can 1) become actionable and 2) you don’t have to be responsible for it. What you’ve done is a great start, but imagine if one person tried writing all of Wikipedia.

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

#78

Post by srvmshr »

chimeracoder wrote: post #69
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 onl…

OP does not list all the major languages either. I have a feeling that, just the four main southern languages & its dialects will outrank all northern European languages combined (except English technically)

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

#80

Post by simne »

Most impressed me, just non-related to reality map of Russian language. I could more believe, that it is 100% spoken in Bulgaria, or Hungary, than in Ukraine, or in Georgia.

More real current estimate, is 10-40% in East Europe and in Baltic counties, 30% in Georgia and in some other exUSSR states in Asia, and less than 50% in Ukraine.

And I must say, even when few Asia countries claimed to be "USSR Republics", in reality, there survived old Asian totalitarianism of old tribes and they was soviet just for tourists, but for citizens, Asian traditions remain almost unchanged until collapse of USSR.

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