It looks slightly different, but question is, does it sóund different. I have no further knowledge about swiss-german, so no opinion about the particular case. But often dialects written down look very different (I would have a hard time deciphering the dialect from 20 km from here written down). Spoken the difference is often allready a lot less, and most of the time the biggest difference is the sound and length of the vowels.
Sort of like between all the different germanic languages; good, goed, gut, god, góð (english, dutch, german, danish, icelandic) etc
Btw, I am dutch and understand german reasonably well (don't ask me to write in german though..) and I think I could understand most of it. First part was easy, "zeut" was extremely hard!. "wüus" I got, but might not have when only give as a single word. And "soviu" was a slight guess for so viele.
I think it is something like: Swiss-German is just a dialect and does not really count as a language, because there are so many different dialects in Swiss. (Zürich-german Wallis-German etc.)
My geography isnt great I am assuming the last word (first part) is a region but I dont know it so wouldn't know the english version, made an educated guess and englified it ;).
I Stayed in a hotel in Switzerland only a few months ago and spoke German with the hotel staff and, to me, it all sounded like German. I have heard though that Austrian German sounds like the ‘country bumpkin’ version of German? I hear, from sources I can’t remember, that when Arnold Schwarzenegger made the Terminator movies, he expected to record the dubbing voiceovers for the German language releases of the film. However, studio bosses had to hire a German actor after feedback from German audiences said that the Terminator sounded like a peasant farmer, to a German ear.
Great quiz! Perhaps Bashkir is not strictly located in Europe as Bashkortostan is in the Urals (It's close enough so perhaps it should be on the map)
Tatar should definitely be included as it is firmly west of the Urals and most speakers are in Europe (Kazan)
Also, please accept Slovenian and not just Slovene. Both are equally accepted in the dictionary.
Last, if we are to include the Serbo-Croatian languages and Italian languages as distinct, we should also include Valencian as separate from Catalan. The Spanish Constitution makes this distinction as does basically everyone in the Valencian Community.
I see Serbo-Croatian is now together, as it should be. Valencian is really just a dialect, constitution isn't very relevant here. Same with Serbian, Bosnian etc.
The separateness of Valencian is an internal Spanish political question only. The language is the same in practice, officially too. Spain declares 'Catalan-Valencian' as a language spoken in the country to the EU - one single language, not two
Welsh has around 500-600 thousand level one speakers. Irish is a little far behind with a little under 100 thousand. Over a million people can speak each language however.
I'm counting it as a dialect. Actually the update was to remove/group dialects. I do understand that High German is greatly unintelligible from Plattdeutsch however.
If you include Chechen and Chuvash, you have to also include Tatar and Bashkir (both Turkic languages, both spoken natively in Europe west of main Ural mountains ridge, with Tatar having over 5 million native speakers and Bashkir having about 1,5 million native speakers). And both of them have more native speakers than either Chuvash or Chechen.
I agree it is sad. There is reason to be optimistic about tge future of Welsh though, as a growing amount of native speakers are young people. Irish, Breton and Scottish Gaelic are still on the decline however.
Don't worry about it, I understood just fine! In English it is spelled Belarusian. And for this quiz I'm using standard Jetpunk type-ins which doesn't include Catalonian for Catalan. I will keep the type-ins the way they are due to this quiz being featured and my belief that standardisation is important among featured quizzes.
English only has 60 million?? The population of the UK is 66 or 67 million to start with, to which should be added the population of Ireland and Malta and Gibraltar...the Catalan figure is low - that 4 million only includes Catalonia, while the language is spoken in Valencia, the Balearic Islands and a bit of Sardinia. OK they are dialects but still the same basic language
These are Level 1 (native speakers) that we are looking for. The UK has several immigrant languages as well as Welsh/Scots which my source considers a language not a dialect. Ireland only has 4.8 million people to add to that, some of whom are speakers of various immigrant languages too (and a sizeable native Irish-speaking community).
Most Catalan speakers speak it as a second language, and there are tons of native Spanish speakers even in Catalonia. Everyone who speaks a language as their second or third toungue is discounted, for it becomes subjective when deciding how fluent someone must be in a language in order to be called a speaker of said language.
The population of Spain is 46 million not 38. All Spaniards speak Spanish perfectly. They might also speak or even predominantly speak a regional language but they still all speak Spanish perfectly. It is not simply a question of deducting the Catalan, Basque, Galician, Asturian and Aragonese speakers from the total population. The French figure is low too, given it is spoken by a third of Belgium's population, a third of Switzerland's as well as all of France and most of Luxembourg - that's over 70 million easily
Again L1 for Spain is 38 million. Native speakers of Catalan, Galician, Aragonese, etc. are excluded from the total number for Spanish. And there are only 76 million native French speakers worldwide, let alone in Europe.
Thank you very much for your efforts, it's really a great quiz now. I'm still a bit surprised that Arabic doesn't make it to one million. Possibly refugees aren't counted completely, and immigrants might underreport it
Only languages with European background are included here. Romani is technically of Indian origin but the modern tongues of the different Gypsy groups developed in Europe.
Indo-European languanges technically come from West Asia. However this does not include Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian and Basque (the first three being Uralic languages, while Basque is a language isolate). Although it is worth mentioning that a language such as English didn't exist back then, and is developed from proto-Germanic (which was in turn developed in Europe).
Because Romani Gypsies have historically been a nomadic people (not always out of choice), having originated in Rajasthan and migrated through the Persian and old Byzantine empires before arriving in Europe in the 13th century, then dispersed themselves over a vast area. I would imagine that the dot’s size is representative of the relative size of the Romani speaking population, and it’s placement is roughly at the centre of the geographical area over which they are spread.
Russia is home to a great number of languages, there are many more Turkic, Uralic, Mongolic, Tungustic and Caucasian languages spoken in Russia but I've only included those with at least a million speakers.
It's a good quiz, I like how you included the European part of Kazakhstan. I have one question though. Why is Romani included as a European language. Just asking.
Thanks! European Kazakhstan was a recent addition to the map. The Romani language(s) are included since they (and their speakers) have a fairly extensive history in the European continent. Also, the Romani spoken in Europe is different to its sister languages spoken today in other continents.
If for some strange warp of time and space, some people in Germany speak old norse (icelandic is the closest existing language to it) as their mother tongue, there is most likely fewer than one million of them.
I understand there are probably a million questions asking this, but why are some languages not included such as the various italian languages. They are not dialects and developed independently, and even the ones that are dialects certainly have enough to also be considered unique languages. Dialect and Language are not mutually exclusive. Just my two cents in the pile of change that is these comments.
What you say is correct, the distinction between 'language and dialect' is more of a social or political distinction and not one that is linguistically sound. The reason I make this distiction is that for the sake of my languages quizzes I must draw a line and be consistent. Additionally, I see that it's important to value the social aspect since this quiz is for a popular audience, and if the majority of Italian speakers see Venetian as part of Italian, then this is a factor I should consider in order to make the quiz more broad and accessible, for example. When quantifying languages, nothing is simple and there are fuzzy lines everywhere.
Thank you for the question, it is a good question and I hope my answer makes sense!
Scots has about 2.5 million speakers according to the last census, if your source considers it a language then why is it not included on this list if the least spoken language only has 1 million, even if you only include fluent speakers it has more than kazakh does which is still on this list.
You even mentioned Scots in the comments section of this quiz and as a Scot who speaks Scots it is quite disheartening to see it missing.
Please consider that all figures presented are for native speakers!
- Languages such as Irish have smaller communities of native speakers, but many people learn some of it as a second language.
- Yes, Catalan has only 4.1 million native speakers. Half of Catalonia speaks Spanish as a native language and the number is larger is Valencia.
- Yes, Romanian and Romani are different languages and no, they are not closely related.
- I've updated this quiz to remove dialects, although I can think of at least one language which may be controversial.
- I will add Tatar and Bashkir in future, right now they are off the map so I will have to redo the entire map first in order to add them :(
It is as valid as some of the Italian 'languages'.
Sort of like between all the different germanic languages; good, goed, gut, god, góð (english, dutch, german, danish, icelandic) etc
I think it is something like: Swiss-German is just a dialect and does not really count as a language, because there are so many different dialects in Swiss. (Zürich-german Wallis-German etc.)
My geography isnt great I am assuming the last word (first part) is a region but I dont know it so wouldn't know the english version, made an educated guess and englified it ;).
Some pictures they do not even look real but made out of felt! (Yes I know where it comes from) (needle felted, not the flat pieces)
Tatar should definitely be included as it is firmly west of the Urals and most speakers are in Europe (Kazan)
Also, please accept Slovenian and not just Slovene. Both are equally accepted in the dictionary.
Last, if we are to include the Serbo-Croatian languages and Italian languages as distinct, we should also include Valencian as separate from Catalan. The Spanish Constitution makes this distinction as does basically everyone in the Valencian Community.
“kazak” is surely close enough? “Slovenian” like wise.
These are Level 1 (native speakers) that we are looking for. The UK has several immigrant languages as well as Welsh/Scots which my source considers a language not a dialect. Ireland only has 4.8 million people to add to that, some of whom are speakers of various immigrant languages too (and a sizeable native Irish-speaking community).
Most Catalan speakers speak it as a second language, and there are tons of native Spanish speakers even in Catalonia. Everyone who speaks a language as their second or third toungue is discounted, for it becomes subjective when deciding how fluent someone must be in a language in order to be called a speaker of said language.
Their first language is Hungarian, and only after Romanian.
Missed 2 then :(
Great quiz, thanks!
Thank you for the question, it is a good question and I hope my answer makes sense!
You even mentioned Scots in the comments section of this quiz and as a Scot who speaks Scots it is quite disheartening to see it missing.