#language maps

[reyneluvirith]

Languages of Skyrim, 4E197

The languages of Skyrim as described in my language-focused apocrypha, Languages of Tamriel, which fleshes out the linguistic situation of Tamriel in the Fourth Era.

>> Direct link to the map <<

[victusinveritas]

Romance Languages that went extinct. Map by Reddit User untipoquenojuega

[not-gurecat]

In Catalan they say "mèu"!

How cats meow in every country.

[amateurvoltaire]

I feel that one of the most overlooked aspects of studying the French Revolution is that, in 18th-century France, most people did not speak French. Yes, you read that correctly.

On 26 Prairial, Year II (14 June 1794), Abbé Henri Grégoire (1) stood before the Convention and delivered a report called The Report on the Necessity and Means of Annihilating Dialects and Universalising the Use of the French Language(2). This report, the culmination of a survey initiated four years earlier, sought to assess the state of languages in France. In 1790, Grégoire sent a 43-question survey to 49 informants across the departments, asking questions like: "Is the use of the French language universal in your area?" "Are one or more dialects spoken here?" and "What would be the religious and political impact of completely eradicating this dialect?"

The results were staggering. According to Grégoire's report:

“One can state without exaggeration that at least six million French people, especially in rural areas, do not know the national language; an equal number are more or less incapable of holding a sustained conversation; and, in the final analysis, those who speak it purely do not exceed three million; likely, even fewer write it correctly.” (3)

Considering that France’s population at the time was around 27 million, Grégoire’s assertion that 12 million people could barely hold a conversation in French is astonishing. This effectively meant that about 40% of the population couldn't communicate with the remaining 60%.

Now, it’s worth noting that Grégoire’s survey was heavily biased. His 49 informants (4) were educated men—clergy, lawyers, and doctors—likely sympathetic to his political views. Plus, the survey barely covered regions where dialects were close to standard French (the langue d’oïl areas) and focused heavily on the south and peripheral areas like Brittany, Flanders, and Alsace, where linguistic diversity was high.

Still, even if the numbers were inflated, the takeaway stands: a massive portion of France did not speak Standard French. “But surely,” you might ask, “they could understand each other somewhat, right? How different could those dialects really be?” Well, let’s put it this way: if Barère and Robespierre went to lunch and spoke in their regional dialects—Gascon and Picard, respectively—it wouldn’t be much of a conversation.

The linguistic make-up of France in 1790

The notion that barely anyone spoke French wasn’t new in the 1790s. The Ancien Régime had wrestled with it for centuries. The Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts, issued in 1539, mandated the use of French in legal proceedings, banning Latin and various dialects. In the 17th and 18th centuries, numerous royal edicts enforced French in newly conquered provinces. The founding of the Académie Française in 1634 furthered this control, as the Académie aimed to standardise French, cementing its status as the kingdom's official language.

Despite these efforts, Grégoire tells us that 40% of the population could barely speak a word of French. So, if they didn’t speak French, what did they speak? Let’s take a look.

In 1790, the old provinces of the Ancien Régime were disbanded, and 83 departments named after mountains and rivers took their place. These 83 departments provide a good illustration of the incredibly diverse linguistic make-up of France.

Langue d’oïl dialects dominated the north and centre, spoken in 44 out of the 83 departments (53%). These included Picard, Norman, Champenois, Burgundian, and others—dialects sharing roots in Old French. In the south, however, the Occitan language group took over, with dialects like Languedocien, Provençal, Gascon, Limousin, and Auvergnat, making up 28 departments (34%).

Beyond these main groups, three departments in Brittany spoke Breton, a Celtic language (4%), while Alsatian and German dialects were prevalent along the eastern border (another 4%). Basque was spoken in Basses-Pyrénées, Catalan in Pyrénées-Orientales, and Corsican in the Corse department.

From a government’s perspective, this was a bit of a nightmare.

Why is linguistic diversity a governmental nightmare?

In one word: communication—or the lack of it. Try running a country when half of it doesn’t know what you’re saying.

Now, in more academic terms...

Standardising a language usually serves two main purposes: functional efficiency and national identity. Functional efficiency is self-evident. Just as with the adoption of the metric system, suppressing linguistic variation was supposed to make communication easier, reducing costly misunderstandings.

That being said, the Revolution, at first, tried to embrace linguistic diversity. After all, Standard French was, frankly, “the King’s French” and thus intrinsically elitist—available only to those who had the money to learn it. In January 1790, the deputy François-Joseph Bouchette proposed that the National Assembly publish decrees in every language spoken across France. His reasoning? “Thus, everyone will be free to read and write in the language they prefer.”

A lovely idea, but it didn’t last long. While they made some headway in translating important decrees, they soon realised that translating everything into every dialect was expensive. On top of that, finding translators for obscure dialects was its own nightmare. And so, the Republic’s brief flirtation with multilingualism was shut down rather unceremoniously.

Now, on to the more fascinating reason for linguistic standardisation: national identity.

Language and Nation

One of the major shifts during the French Revolution was in the concept of nationhood. Today, there are many ideas about what a nation is (personally, I lean towards Benedict Anderson’s definition of a nation as an “imagined community”), but definitions aside, what’s clear is that the Revolution brought a seismic change in the notion of French identity. Under the Ancien Régime, the French nation was defined as a collective that owed allegiance to the king: “One faith, one law, one king.” But after 1789, a nation became something you were meant to want to belong to. That was problematic.

Now, imagine being a peasant in the newly-created department of Vendée. (Hello, Jacques!) Between tending crops and trying to avoid trouble, Jacques hasn’t spent much time pondering his national identity. Vendéen? Well, that’s just a random name some guy in Paris gave his region. French? Unlikely—he has as much in common with Gascons as he does with the English. A subject of the King? He probably couldn’t name which king.

So, what’s left? Jacques is probably thinking about what is around him: family ties and language. It's no coincidence that the ‘brigands’ in the Vendée organised around their parishes— that’s where their identity lay.

The Revolutionary Government knew this. The monarchy had understood it too and managed to use Catholicism to legitimise their rule. The Republic didn't have such a luxury. As such, the revolutionary government found itself with the impossible task of convincing Jacques he was, in fact, French.

How to do that? Step one: ensure Jacques can actually understand them. How to accomplish that? Naturally, by teaching him.

Language Education during the Revolution

Under the Ancien Régime, education varied wildly by class, and literacy rates were abysmal. Most commoners received basic literacy from parish and Jesuit schools, while the wealthy enjoyed private tutors. In 1791, Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand (5) presented a report on education to the Constituent Assembly (6), remarking:

“A striking peculiarity of the state from which we have freed ourselves is undoubtedly that the national language, which daily extends its conquests beyond France’s borders, remains inaccessible to so many of its inhabitants." (7)

He then proposed a solution:

“Primary schools will end this inequality: the language of the Constitution and laws will be taught to all; this multitude of corrupt dialects, the last vestige of feudalism, will be compelled to disappear: circumstances demand it." (8)

A sensible plan in theory, and it garnered support from various Assembly members, Condorcet chief among them (which is always a good sign).

But, France went to war with most of Europe in 1792, making linguistic diversity both inconvenient and dangerous. Paranoia grew daily, and ensuring the government’s communications were understood by every citizen became essential. The reverse, ensuring they could understand every citizen, was equally pressing. Since education required time and money—two things the First Republic didn’t have—repression quickly became Plan B.

The War on Patois

This repression of regional languages was driven by more than abstract notions of nation-building; it was a matter of survival. After all, if Jacques the peasant didn’t see himself as French and wasn’t loyal to those shadowy figures in Paris, who would he turn to? The local lord, who spoke his dialect and whose land his family had worked for generations.

Faced with internal and external threats, the revolutionary government viewed linguistic unity as essential to the Republic’s survival. From 1793 onwards, language policy became increasingly repressive, targeting regional dialects as symbols of counter-revolution and federalist resistance. Bertrand Barère spearheaded this campaign, famously saying:

“Federalism and superstition speak Breton; emigration and hatred of the Republic speak German; counter-revolution speaks Italian, and fanaticism speaks Basque. Let us break these instruments of harm and error... Among a free people, the language must be one and the same for all.”

This, combined with Grégoire’s report, led to the Décret du 8 Pluviôse 1794, which mandated French-speaking teachers in every rural commune of departments where Breton, Italian, Basque, and German were the main languages.

Did it work? Hardly. The idea of linguistic standardisation through education was sound in principle, but France was broke, and schools cost money. Spoiler alert: France wouldn’t have a free, secular, and compulsory education system until the 1880s.

What it did accomplish, however, was two centuries of stigmatising patois and their speakers...

Notes

(1) Abbe Henri Grégoire was a French Catholic priest, revolutionary, and politician who championed linguistic and social reforms, notably advocating for the eradication of regional dialects to establish French as the national language during the French Revolution.

(2) "Sur la nécessité et les moyens d’anéantir les patois et d’universaliser l’usage de la langue francaise”

(3)On peut assurer sans exagération qu’au moins six millions de Français, sur-tout dans les campagnes, ignorent la langue nationale ; qu’un nombre égal est à-peu-près incapable de soutenir une conversation suivie ; qu’en dernier résultat, le nombre de ceux qui la parlent purement n’excède pas trois millions ; & probablement le nombre de ceux qui l’écrivent correctement est encore moindre.

(4) And, as someone who has done A LOT of statistics in my lifetime, 49 is not an appropriate sample size for a population of 27 million. At a confidence level of 95% and with a margin of error of 5%, he would need a sample size of 384 people. If he wanted to lower the margin of error at 3%, he would need 1,067. In this case, his margin of error is 14%.

That being said, this is a moot point anyway because the sampled population was not reflective of France, so the confidence level of the sample is much lower than 95%, which means the margin of error is much lower because we implicitly accept that his sample does not reflect the actual population.

(5) Yes. That Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand. It’s always him. He’s everywhere. If he hadn’t died in 1838, he’d probably still be part of Macron’s cabinet. Honestly, he’s probably haunting the Élysée as we speak — clearly the man cannot stay away from politics.

(6) For those new to the French Revolution and the First Republic, we usually refer to two legislative bodies, each with unique roles. The National Assembly (1789): formed by the Third Estate to tackle immediate social and economic issues. It later became the Constituent Assembly, drafting the 1791 Constitution and establishing a constitutional monarchy.

(7) Une singularité frappante de l'état dont nous sommes affranchis est sans doute que la langue nationale, qui chaque jour étendait ses conquêtes au-delà des limites de la France, soit restée au milieu de nous inaccessible à un si grand nombre de ses habitants.

(8) Les écoles primaires mettront fin à cette étrange inégalité : la langue de la Constitution et des lois y sera enseignée à tous ; et cette foule de dialectes corrompus, dernier reste de la féodalité, sera contraint de disparaître : la force des choses le commande

(9) Le fédéralisme et la superstition parlent bas-breton; l’émigration et la haine de la République parlent allemand; la contre révolution parle italien et le fanatisme parle basque. Brisons ces instruments de dommage et d’erreur. .. . La monarchie avait des raisons de ressembler a la tour de Babel; dans la démocratie, laisser les citoyens ignorants de la langue nationale, incapables de contréler le pouvoir, cest trahir la patrie, c'est méconnaitre les bienfaits de l'imprimerie, chaque imprimeur étant un instituteur de langue et de législation. . . . Chez un peuple libre la langue doit étre une et la méme pour tous.

(10) Patois means regional dialect in French.

[linguisticdiscovery]

Map of British English dialects

by Ryan Starkey (Starkey Comics)

Author Ryan Starkey accompanies the map with a great article:

I’ve spent the last few years pooling together every study, survey, map, and database I can find, and then subjecting my image to several rounds of peer feedback. […] The end result is an image which is, to my knowledge, the most detailed map of British dialects ever made.

He also discusses “Why this map is wrong, and always will be”, and just how difficult it is to create a precise map of dialect regions.

Why is there so much dialect diversity in the U.K.? Because the longer a language is in a region, the more it tends to diversify. This is partly why, for example, there is a much larger variety of dialects spoken in the Eastern U.S. than the Western U.S.

Further Reading

The stories of English (David Crystal)

This is the perfect book to read if you want to know more about the history of dialect diversity in English, because the entire focus of the book is to show that English is not just one unified language (hence the plural “stories” in the title). It’s one of my favorite popular language books.

[reyneluvirith]

this is so cool!!!! love love love the depth given to each of the languages—attention to very specific local dialects is too often lacking from conlangs. also aaah the inherent politics of language differences 💖 how distinct are Twac̊in̊ and Seșǔ from each other? and the internal differences between their dialects? very curious bc of the anti-Seșǔ sentiment you described

(also nice work with the script!!!)

inspired by @reyneluvirith skyrim and fire emblem maps sent to me by my friend, maps depicting the sub and regional dialects of the northeast of the country Yaence.

Also featuring lakes and rivers too small to be included on my past world maps(but not the big interactive QGIS one ive been doing forever), major highway-type guys(though these are primarily used by forms of public transit), the borders of prefectures, and some major-ish cities in the area.

Some info about the cities pictured, and the dialect fuckery going on as well below the cut!

LANGUAGE AND DIALECT

Pictured in this map are two major languages that fall under the Tewenic language family, and are sister languages. Called Twac̊in̊(left) and Seșǔ(right), they linguistically are more akin to niece and aunt respectively, with the latter diverging from the Tewes protolanguage at the same time as the common ancestor of Twac̊in̊ and minority language Hetema. Due to this, the writing used by Seșǔ is closely related to that of Twac̊in̊ , but retains archaic artifacts of the abjad that was once used by Twac̊in̊ , and remains still in Hetema. Examples of these archaic letters include the use of the cluster t-w(fig. 1) instead of the single glyph tw(fig. 2), and the original m(fig. 3) glyph that fell out of use in Twac̊in̊ due to the sound being dropped altogether as a phoneme. Despite being the most widespread in the language family, Twac̊in̊ is the only member to have lost the /m/ sound.

The organization of the different subsections of language can get a little rough, especially since I've had this project since forever, but he's a basic chart to get you by:

Basically, language describes what I call all forms of the language, comparable to English as an entire language. Macrodialect refers to massive regions that all share similar overall differences. So English : American English = Twac̊in̊ : South H̊lanuel. From there, dialect or subdialect, used interchangeably, is across comparatively smaller areas, but still pretty big. Where macrodialects may cover an entire section of a continent, a dialect may only cover a country or two. Then down into regional dialects, which are within a country at their largest. Comparing to real life again, USA southern English : Atlanta area dialect = Suyal : Na Hel.

TWAC̊IN̊

The official language of the nation, and technically has a lot of overlap and overshadowing in the areas marked in the Seșǔ map, but that's not what I wanted to highlight with these maps. It is the language of majority across all three species that reside in the country: yotavuș, the native species, making up about 79% of the population of Yaence; humans, making up about 13%; and Keleŵu making up the rest. Yaence is a bit of an outlier in terms of human population outside of Earthspace :).

Featured in particular are the three of the four subdialects of macrodialect South H̊lanuel spoken in Yaence: Aeleh, Suyal, and N̊anec̊. Not pictured are Luatwed, found in the furthest western corner of the nation, and the In̊seh subdialects Lusus and Siyue to the south. The nation's most populated city, Ludu, as of the 2372 census, is often considered as the place with the "most correct" dialect in the country, and the word <Duyacin̊> implies a sense of being the everyman, "normal", and most importantly, Not Poor. One of my main characters born and mostly raised in the city actually has an accent in direct opposition to this, due to his parents raising him around people with accents from central parts of the country, areas considered to be less well-off.

SEȘǓ

Something extremely important, which you may have noticed in the maps themselves, is that the nation's capital is surrounded by one of the Seșǔ subdialects. More importantly, one of three subdialects that is native to Yaence, traditionally a non-Seșǔ country. This lends to a very... interesting accent in the people of Yasnae, which includes a muddling of the Twac̊in̊ /ʃ/, and the contrasting in Seșǔ of /ʃ/ and /s/ as the biggest offender noticed by other people in the country. Plenty of folks, in particular those in the western, less diverse regions of Yaence, look down on this accent as a degradation of the Twac̊in̊ language, and some extremist groups have put this fact forth as definitive proof that somewhere with an accent that better represents the majority of people(a touchy subject to the other people in the south and central regions that the westerners also look down on), namely, somewhere like Ludu or Nen̊in̊(not pictured).

EXTRA

See below for a chart with these places and language parts written in the native writing system. Also, keep in mind that while Twac̊in̊ and Seșǔ use the same base alphabet, there are diacritics and the aforementioned archaic letters in play. Think of it like how both English and Spanish use the Latin alphabet, but similar letters may represent different sounds, and some variations may exist in one language but not the other(ñ and rr in Spanish, /ʒ/ for the most part in English). If anyone has specific questions about the language-y side of stuff, feel free to DM or send an ask!

[linguisticillustrations]

Table with the partinioning of the TREE-WOOD-FOREST semantic domain.

Georgakopoulos, Thanasis & Stéphane Polis. 2018. The semantic map model: State of the art and future avenues for linguistic research. Language and Linguistics Compass 12(2). e12270. https://doi.org/10.1111/lnc3.12270.

[brazilspill]

[dunmeshistash]

I hope Ryoko adds some more on world locations in the new Bible..

The fanfic in my head needs some namess

Also do we have anything about the diff languages or just common?

-👾

As far as I can tell the new edition has the same locations on the map as the last one... but for city names we got this from Kabru

EHScans Translation:

Official English Translation:

Kahka Brud, Izganda, Sadena, Melini and Dozahk are all in the eastern continent and show up in the world map, since it says "world's major cities" I imagine the rest must be in other continents

Edit: Speaking of which... is Melini village even a major city? Could it be that it grew that much from the dungeon in 6 years? Or is it named just because that's where they are? It's said it was just a fishing village before.

[reyneluvirith]

Language Families of the Mannish Provinces, 4E197

The language families of the mannish provinces (Cyrodiil, Skyrim, High Rock, and Hammerfell) as described in my language-focused apocrypha, Languages of Tamriel, which fleshes out the linguistic situation of Tamriel in the Fourth Era.

Maps of the individual families:

LOTS of different maps this time! These are the overarching languages families for the languages depicted on my map of the languages of the mannish provinces. I'm planning on making the full suite of these again once all of the provinces are done, but might make a couple of the language family/branch maps after each province as well. We'll see!!

Direct links to hi-res versions of the full maps:

Top-level families

Second-level families

Third-level families

Fourth-level families

And the language family-specific maps:

Aldmeri languages

Nedic-Atmoran languages

Yokudan languages

Khajiiti languages

Saxhleel languages

[victusinveritas]

[mapsontheweb]

The most spoken languages by city in New York City, beside English and Spanish.

by wordfinderxundefined

[kenway]

finally had time to sit down and finish reading through path of life and can i just say.. the cgs for this event were peak

[beautiful-basque-country]

[x]

The legal situation of Nafarroa is such a SHAME!!

Also, both Lapurdi and western Bizkaia have the same percentage of Basque speakers but I'd personally given a higher one to Bizkaia according to my own experience? Probably it's just me.

[filmap]

Une langue universelle / Universal Language Matthew Rankin. 2024

Mosaic Building 390 Sherbrook St #3, Winnipeg, MB R3B 2W5, Canada See in map

See in imdb

[mapofsouthdakota]

Maps rambles - bubble boi Caleb

Stop being such a tempting lil boi, Caleb. You’re bubbles and heartbreak.

He’s perfect. I love sour things. I love sparkling water. I’d renounce cilantro and live off apples and carbonation alone if that’s what it takes. Domestic delulu activated.

Me getting texts from my fictional bestboi: