[HN Gopher] Show HN: I made a website that color-codes the world...
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Show HN: I made a website that color-codes the world by language
Author : florianwueest
Score : 39 points
Date : 2023-07-14 14:33 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (languageworldmap.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (languageworldmap.com)
| janalsncm wrote:
| 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.
| Gigablah wrote:
| Apparently Singapore has sunk into the ocean.
| kiliancs wrote:
| 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-...
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| Where is Catalan spoken in France?
| nickserv wrote:
| Traditionally the area northeast of the Pyrenees, or around
| Perpignan to name a city. I'm not sure there are many people
| that speak it though, I've only ever heard it on regional
| radio and television channels.
| NiceWayToDoIT wrote:
| English - in China there is more English speakers than in rest of
| the world so not sure what is criteria (100% of people must
| speak?) Serbia - missing Croatia / missing Montenegro it is the
| same language (officially it is called Serbo-Croatian). Slovenia
| can understand and Macedonia as well ...
| wenderen wrote:
| 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 of North India. The Balkan languages are largely mutually
| intelligible - correct me if I'm wrong.
|
| Cute visualization, half-baked idea.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| 31/2. Just because you speak passable German, doesn't mean you
| can always understand the Swiss (even when they speak _Swiss
| German_!).
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| Even if you speak native German, you will not understand a
| seizable part of Swiss who will be speaking their language
| (French, Italian, Romansh)
| rob74 wrote:
| This is nice as a demo webapp, but I wouldn't rely on it. To sum
| up the other comments, you have two possibilities:
|
| - If it shows the language as spoken (=official language) in a
| country, a significant proportion of the population might still
| not speak it, e.g. French in Canada (native French speakers
| mostly in Quebec) or Russian in Estonia (not wanting to learn the
| language of the former occupying power).
|
| - Even if a language is not an official language in a country,
| you _might_ still get lucky, e.g. there are a lot of Hungarians
| in Romania, you can get pretty far with German in places
| frequented by German tourists, not to mention English.
| phantomathkg wrote:
| Cantonese is not in the list... and I bet a bunch of dialect
| won't be there as well... this sound rather not completed...
| itairall wrote:
| [dead]
| sepsol wrote:
| So, apparently Afghans and Iranians don't speak the same
| language, weird
| sonicshadow wrote:
| I'm just grabbing the popcorn
| itake wrote:
| Bali doesn't speak Bahasa, they speak Balinese.
| vincengomes wrote:
| Good Luck to whoever thinks of getting around in South India by
| speaking Hindi.
| alexb_ wrote:
| If this is using "official language", America should not be
| highlighted green for English.
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| Isn't it that the US do not have any official language?
| tomovo wrote:
| Crimea is not Russia. It's Ukraine. Please get it right.
| simne wrote:
| 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.
| xwdv wrote:
| 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.
| aodonnell2536 wrote:
| 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.
| ipince wrote:
| I was surprised by that too, but I don't think it makes sense
| at all. I'm curious as to what those categories are based off.
| jacknews wrote:
| Some people might be surprised that you can communicate with the
| whole of Canada, in French. But not Algeria?
| masukomi wrote:
| Especially the residents of Canada and Algeria. ;)
| josefrichter wrote:
| I wonder why French doesn't show Morocco and Algeria? In both
| countries, some 30-50% of people speak French.
| josefrichter wrote:
| Ah I see, these are just "official" languages. Otherwise
| probably the whole planet would be highlighted for English.
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| And BTW French had recently been removed as an official
| language there.
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| Highlighting proportions via color intensity would help.
|
| But this information is buried deep down in Google and
| Facebook and is sometimes outright illegal to disseminate
| (like in French vs Dutch at the level of Belgian
| municipalities).
|
| Before Cambridge Analytica scandal Facebook business accounts
| had access to numbers down to a few thousand with regards to
| the interface language.
|
| I remember that some 80% of Ukrainians used Russian as
| interface language in their Facebook, and in Brussels, Dutch
| was on par with English.
| tboyd47 wrote:
| Awesome idea!
|
| It's so much more nuanced than this. I spent much time in Turkey
| and met people from Azerbaijan, Chechnya, and other Central Asian
| countries. All the Turkic languages are all mutually
| intelligible.
| shimonabi wrote:
| By knowing English, you can communicate with most of the world,
| because almost every country teaches English as a foreign
| language. For example, more than half of the popuation of Europe
| can easily communicate in English. I've seen that in Netherlands
| they already prefer English to Dutch when they talk to each
| other.
|
| I know 3 foreign languages and I think it's a waste of time to
| learn more, because if a person is not literate enough to
| communicate in English, I have nothing to talk to them about.
| jchmrt wrote:
| While it's true that most people in the Netherlands speak
| English (at some level), it's really not true that Dutch people
| prefer to speak to each other in English when everyone present
| speaks Dutch.
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| > if a person is not literate enough to communicate in English,
| I have nothing to talk to them about.
|
| I agree, I have the same with quantum physics and Middle-Age
| French.
| dahfizz wrote:
| Using GPI as a proxy for "physical safety" is a bad choice.
| Physical safety is only a small part of a GPI score. Just use
| crime rate. That's what people care about - "Will I be the victim
| of a crime if I travel here".
|
| > North America is more peaceful than the global average on the
| Safety and Security and Ongoing Conflict domains, but scores
| poorly on the Militarisation domain, particularly with regards to
| military expenditure, nuclear and heavy weapons, and weapons
| exports.
|
| https://www.visionofhumanity.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/...
| atonse wrote:
| Does the militarization of a country or its capacity to produce
| nuclear weapons matter as far as a destination for travel
| though? Genuinely asking.
| dahfizz wrote:
| I don't think so. Unless the country in question is actively
| at war, their military budget or weapons arsenal does not
| matter to me as a tourist. Its not like they are going to
| nuke their own cities.
|
| If anything, I want my travel destinations to have as big a
| military as possible. As a tourist I don't have to pay for
| any of the negative externalities of a large military, but
| would benefit from its protection.
| aodonnell2536 wrote:
| 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?
| didgeoridoo wrote:
| 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.
| aodonnell2536 wrote:
| I guess I can't fault the site's creator for going with an
| established ranking, but after reading what you said and
| taking a look at the index it seems utterly laughable.
| nashashmi wrote:
| More localization can be added to highlight official languages
| with more granularity.
|
| In Florida, I came across spanish speaking people who did not
| know English. That experience was surreal.
| ozymandias8 wrote:
| The 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.
| poutrathor wrote:
| Yeah, India is done badly by the OP.
| garyfirestorm wrote:
| india has many languages and many state languages are unique
| to the state... if i speak my state's language - highly
| likely i don't speak language of the neighboring state, but
| OP painted india with one broad brush
| butz wrote:
| Where's Andorra and Liechtenstein?
| petesergeant wrote:
| 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.
| bluepod4 wrote:
| They only speak English in Nigeria?
| Ntuthuko_hlela wrote:
| I just tried it, amazing work mate.
| lionkor wrote:
| In 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.
| mysterydip wrote:
| Maybe solid color for officially supported, striped/hashed for
| "unofficial but would get you pretty far"?
| wongarsu wrote:
| Or just color coded from white to 100% of that color based on
| the number of speakers in that country. A language being one
| of the official languages of the country doesn't guarantee
| that it will be useful in traveling that country, only that
| it will be useful when interacting with the government.
| awmc2000 wrote:
| 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.
| freelanddev wrote:
| Interesting, I had the same initial thought :)
| [deleted]
| fensgrim wrote:
| > except countries like Russia
|
| Can confirm, here it'll be problematic for one to speak in
| English with anyone younger than 16 / older than 40 and/or
| outside major population centers. (though in my experience, its
| the same situation with English in Austria and Russian in
| Latvia/Lithuania).
| lionkor wrote:
| Been to Russia a few times the last 2 years, for a total of a
| few months, and my English was useless. My German was
| decidedly more useful, even if just to understand Rucksack,
| Butterbrot and Schlagbaum.
| skilled wrote:
| The "Celebrities That Speak The Same Number Of Languages As You"
| is a little bit cringe since it doesn't show you the
| "celebrities" that show the same exact languages that you speak,
| which also makes it a little meaningless in my opinion.
|
| I mean, duh, Kim Kardashian does speak English.
| masukomi wrote:
| 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-language speakers.
|
| 2. 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.
|
| 3. the combination of these two makes me unclear on what you mean
| by "parts of the world you can communicate". Is this just a
| coloring of what countries legally recognize the language you
| entered? That's.... not really very useful or reflective of what
| the user of a site like this wants to know.
| 1-more wrote:
| > 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, cu vi parolas Esperanton?" when you walk into a shop
| or ask for directions?
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| Your Esperanto claim is flatly ridiculous. I will happily put
| money on the claim that there are exactly 0 countries with more
| Esperanto speakers than English speakers.
| [deleted]
| paulette449 wrote:
| Seems to be based on official languages, which does not always
| reflect ease of communication. Entering "French" highlights all
| of Canada (rather than just Quebec). Good luck speaking French in
| British Columbia. Nice looking site tho
| 4RealFreedom wrote:
| One thing I noticed - currently the map is dependent on the how
| the languages are selected. Selecting English first then French
| second gives a different map compared to selecting French first
| and English second (Look at Canada in both these cases). I would
| expect to have the same map if the same languages are selected
| regardless of selection order. You could argue that your use-case
| is displaying the possible countries that you can communicate in
| which the site accomplishes. Why have the different colors based
| on language, then? Great job on the site in general. It's very
| straightforward and easy to use.
| fensgrim wrote:
| my 2C/: Russian could be assumed as a minority language for all*
| of ex-USSR countries, so OP missed Armenia/Georgia/Moldova.
|
| Also, it would be interesting to see partial overlap cases (e.g.
| Ukrainian-Belarussian, Russian-Serbian) where one party could
| understand another but couldn't answer well except in "universal"
| sign language (or through switching to another common denominator
| language); though good luck with researching this one.
| SomeRndName11 wrote:
| Also Tajikistan. Ukrainian-Belarussian has much much higher
| overlap then Russian Serbian. And lets face it, Ukranians and
| Belarusians would use Russian when talking to each other
| (keeping in mind that Belarussian is barely used in Belarus
| itself).
| freelanddev wrote:
| This 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.
| gdprrrr wrote:
| No love for Piraha and Ainu :(
| thih9 wrote:
| Piraha: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piraha_language
|
| > Piraha is estimated to have between 250 and 380 speakers.
|
| Perhaps it's there on the map, but we don't see it, because the
| dot is so small and hard to find.
| srvmshr wrote:
| 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 regions have no overlap (script could be same between
| them). I can understand some Mandarin but Cantonese is alien.
| That is true for their own people too. Chinese don't speak
| 'Macau'. I am not even getting into India at this point. That's
| completely chaotic.
|
| This kind of infographic in broad strokes can sometimes be
| hurtful to some of the people. Not that I have any strong
| opinions but OP should know this.
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| I wonder how the native language correlates with proper English
| as a learned language.
|
| All of the Scandinavians I spoke about had a wonderful
| pronunciation of English. They may have had an accent, but the
| English words were not distorted by their language, and not was
| the grammar.
|
| On contrast, French often speak what I call a "lazy English".
| We tend to pronounce words as if they were in French and the
| structure of the sentence is very similar to French. This
| really looks like the Latin translations we did at school:
| translate the sentence word by word and stick the beth eat the
| end :)
|
| It may be that the Scandinavian languages are more "compatible"
| with English (wildly guessing, with a lot of hand waving :))
| smallerfish wrote:
| Why does Honduras get highlighted for English while Costa Rica
| does not? Both are marked as "moderate" on English fluency.
| markussss wrote:
| > 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
| srvmshr wrote:
| 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).
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| A decent proportion of young Scandinavians speak English. Not
| all of them, and it definitely doesn't extend as a generality
| to older people.
| benatkin wrote:
| Eh. That isn't what the comment you replied to is saying.
| It's enough that it easily puts it with some of the other
| places that are highlighted as English.
|
| The site says "enter the languages you speak below to see
| with how many parts of the world you can communicate". Quite
| misleading.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| This is exactly what I came in to come in about. English is
| a second language is learned in many places, whether from
| school, business, movies, or song,
| petesergeant wrote:
| 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.
| ..
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| 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.
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > 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.
| srvmshr wrote:
| 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)
| uxx wrote:
| cyprus is english, should be greek bro
| [deleted]
| nerdbert wrote:
| English gets you farther in the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden,
| etc., than it does in India.
| benatkin wrote:
| First thing I checked for was Equatorial Guinea with Spanish
| selected. It's there! The official languages make that easy.
| What's trickier is places where a lot of people speak English but
| it's not an official language.
|
| I'd like to go to Equatorial Guinea. It isn't heavily touristed
| and requires a visa. Nevertheless I searched it on YouTube and
| watched some videos and it sounds like an interesting place, and
| I liked the accent.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| The inverse is also tricky: e.g. South Africa has 12 official
| languages, but that doesn't mean that most people speak all of
| them.
| benatkin wrote:
| Indeed. And at least one is missing. I just listened to a BBC
| podcast episode about Kaaps. https://player.fm/series/the-
| documentary-podcast-1301446/spe... The Wikipedia page seems
| to get it wrong. :(
| ftyers wrote:
| Speaking Norwegian will get you quite far in Sweden and Spanish
| will get you quite far in Portugal (and Brazil). Perhaps the map
| could be updated with colours faded by % mutual intelligibility.
| Also putting Catalan highlights the whole of Spain, not just the
| Catalan countries...
| blarghyblarg wrote:
| 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.
| macintux wrote:
| My first test was Spanish; when the U.S. didn't highlight, I
| _knew_ the comment section was going to be a mess.
| O1111OOO wrote:
| 78 comments. Only 37 points as I type this.
|
| I say this because there's clearly lots of interest (engagement:
| 78 comments) but people aren't happy with the results (only 37
| points).
|
| The first language I typed in was English and right away I could
| tell it didn't take into account the inroads English has made as
| a second language. All of Europe (sans UK) is completely blank,
| for example.
|
| I still bookmarked the site because I'm hopeful that the results
| will become more accurate over time as the constructive
| criticisms are addressed.
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(page generated 2023-07-14 23:02 UTC)