TIL Germany is in Eastern Europe
No Nigeria for English? Lagos is the largest English speaking city in the world.
I don’t think this image accounts for second languages (otherwise Hindi would be twice as big), and as I understand it the reason that English is the official languae of Nigeria even as an independent country is so as not to give anyone’s first language priority over any other
I’ve met a handful of Nigerian students from different parts of the country and they all spoke English as a first language. Also, the US is on there, we don’t have an official language either.
I think you’ve misunderstood me a bit. English is the official language of Nigeria. One of the reasons it’s the official language was that it was seen as neutral within Nigeria because it wasn’t any group’s first language. Or it was at the time, anyway. That was an entire human lifetime ago now, so it’s quite possible that things have changed a bit since then.
It does specify these are first languages/mother tongues. I think English would also be much larger if it included second languages.
Does every household in New Guinea speak a different language or wtf is going on there
The reason why English, French and Spanish are among the world’s most widespread languages has its roots in the imperial past of the nations where they originate
Must be a hot day in Hong Kong for them to be throwing shade like that. It’s true of course but it’s true for all of the biggest languages that conquest played a significant part in their dispersal. Chinese, Arabic, etc are left out of the statement for some reason.
Japanese only spoken in Indonesia?
These kinds of popsci graphs are quite misleading. Unlike with the “Spanish”* bubble, the “Chinese” and “Arabic” bubbles contain many mutually unintelligible languages. Though to be fair, many (most?) of the people in the “Arabic” bubble can speak/read Modern Standard Arabic as a lingua franca, and virtually everyone in China can read Standard Chinese.
*Also, Dude, Spanish is not the preferred nomenclature. Castilian, please.
Spanish is not the preferred nomenclature. Castilian, please.
???
I know there’s a divide in that some countries say “Español” and others “Castellano” but I don’t think it’s a particularly controversial difference.
You seem like somebody who might have an answer for me:
A streaming service that I’m using lists the spoken language of the show, and I’ve often seen Spanish, Espanol, and Castilian listed. What’s the difference between Espanol and Castilian - is it like a regional dialect? Also I’m probably misinformed, but I always thought that Espanol was the English word for Spanish, which makes it seem odd that the service would list both Espanol and Spanish separately.
* Walter, this isn’t a guy who wrote the Magna Carta, this is a guy…
Castilian ia a region of Spain where the “Spanish” language comes from. But there is not the only language there, and there was repression against the other languages there, specially the basque language.
So, call that language Castilian ia also recognize that other languages exists within the country.
(I’m not spanish nor a speaker, so, I may be wrong)
there was repression against the other languages there, specially the basque language.
There was for 40 years, in Franco’s mid-20th century fascist Spain.
If there are two Spanishish audio tracks, I think that pretty much always means that one is “Latin American” and the other is “Peninsular.” I haven’t investigated this myself, but I hear that the “Latin American” track is predominantly a white collar Central Mexican accent. The standard Peninsular accent for media is a Madrid accent.
This is pretty spot on. I use español when comparing Spanish to another foreign language but castellano when talking about the language as a whole. The latter is the most popular in Spain because español is also the nationality and we also can speak catalán, vasco, valenciano, gallego, and others
From what I’ve been told they call it castellano in Argentina too, but I have no idea why.
No ho diguis als valencians que ells parlen català occidental 😛
What happened to the French speaking African countries?
Also Angola absent from the Portuguese group
And Austria is missing from the German numbers.
The numbers for Germany and Switzerland seem low. CH has 8M inhabs and more than a third are German speakers. DE has 84M inhabs and even 30% of immigrant families speak exclusively German at home.
So I would guess more like 77M + 7M + 4M
German language is missing Austria
10 million native Urdu speakers in Pakistan? there’s 11 million in Lahore alone and I’ve never met someone there who doesn’t speak Urdu
Right, the gibberish they speak in Austria is not German. Oh wait…
Aaw, I thought this vis was really cool until I read every single comment
That geographical division made as much sense as referring to my foot as little hand.
TIL China is located in Asia Minor
I think those are old-timey terms that have been retired from academic and popular language. And anyway, Asia Minor means/meant Anatolia—basically modern-day Turkey.
Why are Russia, Central Asia, Mongolia, and the Caucasus “Asia Major”, and East Asia and South Asia “Asia Minor”? I also think it’s weird they split Eastern and Western Europe since Germany and Bulgaria (EDIT: and Poland(EDIT2: and Belarus Ukraine, and Latvia, but they’re colored orange as if theyre included in “Asia Minor”)) are the only countries I see from the region in the circle. Also Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan being in the “Middle East” seems weird to me.
Where do you see Bulgaria in the circle?
On the left side of Turkish
Ah, I was thinking of Bulgarian and wondering how it could fit in this graph.
And Switzerland/Belgium being put in eastern Europe lol
Almost have as many people speak Tamil as Russian? Interesting!
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