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[WIP] World Language Map
Over the last couple of months, I have been working on this map showcasing the languages of the world. The image is 6460x3403. The .TTF is required for optimal .PDN quality when editing in Paint.NET. Look at the bottom of this page for previews.
A language group piqued my interest. The Khoisan (pronounced [kʰoɪˈsaːn] ), a loose group of languages (or an umbrella term) of Non-Bantu ethnolinguistic peoples around the Kalahari desert. They are one of the oldest, if not the oldest racial group on our planet. Estimates say that they became their own distinct race around 100,000 to 200,000 years ago. The Khoisan are known for having click consonants in their languages. During the Bantu Migration from modern-day Cameroon, it is widely believed that the languages of isiXhosa, isiZulu, and Siphuthi borrowed the alveolar, dental, and lateral clicks from Khoisan.
Much of Northern India as of now does not have a label. The reason for this is that there is a high amount of languages and dialects, many of which are interchanged by many people in an out of the area in which said language/dialect is spoken.
Websites that aided me in the creation of this map:
Ethnologue - This website helped me determine whether a spoken tongue was a language or a dialect. Furthermore, it abides by the ISO 639-3 standard, the website has over 7,900 entries of languages. It's parent organization is Sil Global
Glottolog - Glottolog has been a very useful site to me as it contains a detailed list of where what language is and goes into its language family.
Muturzikin - This website provided resources which assisted me in visualising on where languages are spoken, furthermore it also helped me implement the areas in where I missed out on certain languages.
Wikipedia - Although people can freely make edits, it is a wonderful source. It goes into great details and includes citation at the bottom of articles. However, I used this only for languages which had articles that I found were reliable.
I plan to add more to my map, as I have done a majority of the land area of Earth. However the quantity of the languages in a specific area are possibly not shown at all. New Guinea will be a tough area to implement since there are over 840 languages in the state of Papua New Guinea, and hundreds more on the Indonesian side of the island, fitting all those in such a small area of the map will be a challenge. If you know anything about languages in your vicinity, linguistic maps or any errors you see on my map, please email me here.
World Language Map
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