I have added one additional dialect in the Low Countries, as well as subtracted a couple of hard to map or even controversial languages, although they appear on the quiz, albeit already filled-in
Speakers are according to L1 figures found here, excluding languages with exceptional geographic reach
Your language quizzes are amazing. The formatting is really neat and organized. Just wondering - how do you choose where/how to draw the borders for the map? I'm thinking about making an 'all romance languages' quiz w/ a map (if you're not already working on it ;))
I'm glad you think so! For most dialects there are several maps avaliable for reference, to show where specific dialects are. However, some dialects/languages are not exactly easy to map, for Silesian German the area I drew simply covers the region of Silesia in Poland. European languages and dialects are on average well-studied and so dialects have been much better recorded. That being said, some languages such as Yiddish remain out of my mapping skills, considering it has a vast reach across North America, Europe and Israel. You are always welcome to make your own adaptations of whichever quiz idea I make, although I should give a heads up that I have already started an 'All Romance Languages' project in the same vain as this one.
It will be a few days likely. And like I said please feel free to make whichever adaptation you like (I don't want to limit people from making any sort of content)!
Much appreciated, someone already corrected me on the Norwegian, so I was waiting for someone to confirm for Swedish. I hope that all the North Germanic languages now have accurate translations :D
@YellowJacket I looked into a few ways of mapping Yiddish but due to the way it is spread I don't believe that it can be feasibly mapped with an SVG. The closest thing I thought to do is to map Yiddish where it is spoken either in Ukraine or Israel but that didn't work out, sadly.
I like how instead of rushing to get quizzes submitted, you take the time to add small elements' in this case a Language comparison, that make the quiz so much better.
Thank you, I am glad to hear you enjoyed the quiz! Wymysorys is such a rare language nowadays, I hope the people from the village where it is spoken find a way to keep it alive.
Amazing quiz! But I have to disagree with the Dutch/Flemish distinction. If these are different, then Irish English and England English should also be distinguished, so small is the difference. True, a Hollander may not understand a strong rural Flemish dialect. But the same holds for eg Londoners and strong Irish English dialects.
Have to agree with you, I didn't know what to do with Flemish (as a non-Dutch speaking person). I have been told before that Flemish is a seperate language even, (or at least that Flemish people speak Flemish and not Dutch). Changes will be implemented soon, and thank you for playing :)
Written Flemish and written Dutch are almost the same. When speaking we can have some trouble understanding each other though depending on where the people are from exactly. But I can guarantee you that a Dutch person wouldn't understand everything I say when I'm speaking my Brabantian dialect (in Flanders).
I live exactly where the map shows the "Silesian German" is, and I assure You, that practically all people who live there do speak Polish and do not speak Silesian German or any version of German at all. And there are hardly any real native Germans in Silesia since the end of 1940s. Note, that only some people may speak this language in Saxony in Germany. Others were moved by Stalin from the today Poland to the today Germany many years ago.
According to Wikipedia, there are still a small minority of elderly Silesian German speakers in present-day Opole Voivodeship. I left it transparent to show that most people in that region do not speak the dialect, otherwise I would not be able to show the language at all on a map (not a Jetpunk quiz-map anyways, maybe a couple pixels on another map with extreme detail).
True, there are some near and in Opole, a very little number. And it is a small region too, a subregion of that what is on the map now. Could You please draw the Opole voivodship only.
I think it is mainly hisotiric boundaries. It doesn't imply that the majority of people speak a Germanic language. Only that in that region some people live that speak a Germanic language. The same is with Low Saxon/Low German for example. It covers the whole of Northern Germany. Yet, only a very small group still speak that langauge today. I grew up in the Eastern part of the Netherlands and a lot of people there still speak a Low Saxon dialect in some form or the other. Although, the influence of Dutch has changed the language a lot that a lof of people do not even consider it being an own language rather a Dutch dialect. It is not even fully recognised by the Dutch government as being an official language and I have never been thought the language in school. Also because for the language does not really have a standard form, but rather different froms depending on regions.
That is true @Truecomments, a lot of these mappings have to have historical elements, especially after years of standardisation has weakened the strength of what we now call 'dialects'. It can be messy. In Scotland, Scots is most often described as a minority language, although a good number of people speak on a spectrum (in some scenarios, more Scots is mixed into speech). With everything taken into account, accurately surveying dialect and language becomes much more difficult.
Nice quiz! The example given of Norwegian isn't quite right, however - you wouldn't use "har" when there is an adverbial at the end like that. Replace "har" with "gav" like the Danish and Icelandic examples, and it would be right: "Gav vennen min mannen boka i går?"
Thank you, and I am relying on help like this on my quiz! I suspect the Swedish translation suffers from the same issue but I cannot fix it until that is confirmed.
Sometimes I find excellent sources where language syntax and structure is compared through accurately translated sentences, other times I must use Google Translate. More unfortunate yet is when I think I find a good source, but it turns out to be massively flaed (such as my Slavic language samples, although some of that was my own doing).
I think I just need a friend from every language so I can continue to make works such as this, although that may exceed the number of close contacts psychologists reckon we are able to have :D
If you want to be extra accurate, the -en suffix in "vennen" is also a definite marker like in "mannen" and "boka", so it might be grey like the others.
I will consider it. I am usually quite picky with my type-ins for Scots and Scottish Gaelic, so that the two are not confused with one another. Of course the latter is not present here so that changes things, slightly.
I'm guessing that the Scots you're referring to is what's spoken in the southern region of Scotland...? If I'm remembering correctly, another name for that is Lallans, which (if I'm remembering correctly) is the pronunciation of "Lowlands" by the people who live in that area. Robert Burns' poetry contains a lot of Lallans...
That is true, Lallans is a traditional name for the language. At present, it typically refers to Southern/Central dialects however, while Doric is the Mid-Northern dialects (another term traditionally used to refer to Scots as a whole).
I agree, no one would say it like that, but if you want a direct translation/comparison it probably needs to be as you have written it Jiaozira
The problem is, that if you have to say it in correct Danish, you would use different words that does not fit this constructed sentence. You could say "Gav min ven bogen til manden i går?" (i.e give to the man), but actually you would probably always ask "Fik manden bogen af min ven i går?" (i.e Did the man receive the book from my friend yesterday) which I guess have a slightly different meaning
Thank you for the clarification, Sputnix! It is difficult to find the balance between direct comparison (which comes off as robotic or unnatural) and more common ways to say the phrases (which may use different words and such).
Isn't Afrikaans more spoken in Gauteng and Orange rather than the cape province? I thought the whites in the cape province were mostly English, not Dutch.
Its stronghold is on the West of South Africa, where it is spoken by Afrikaners but also mixed-race Basters and Cape Coloureds. Here is a map of the language within South Africa.
If you want to add examples for all the dialects as well, here is Ripuarian. It's not a standardized language, so this is Colognian, the sub-dialect with by far the most speakers.
Much appreciated indeed, I will add those too but first I'm going to add a seperate section for dialects so I'll need a bit of time to get the design right. Cheers :D
It is certainly pronounced with a [j] sound. The only real spelling convention for Colognian, laid out by the Akademie för uns Kölsche Sproch, spells it with a , though. It's one of the four allophones ([j], [ç], [x], [ʁ]) of a single phoneme, all written .
To be fair, the spelling convention is not very commonly known among people that write in the dialect. You will most often see for the [j] realization, or for [ç]/[x], and usually still for [ʁ].
I've seen people online often think English is a Romance language for some reason... I think people are overestimating the role of vocabulary in the structure of a language
Great quiz! Can you explain how you do the thing where you have 2 answers (paths I guess) connected to the same region, and when you type just 1 it turns light green and when you type 2 it turns darker green? I'm thinking about starting my ethnic maps series in a few weeks, and it might come in handy when I want to show two (or more) ethnic groups overlapping in the same location.
Anyways, if you want to comment here that's fine, but if it's easier over Discord, you can just find me (I joined the JetPunk Disc recently) and DM me. IDRC either way, whatever's more convenient for you!
You make a lot of subdivisions of the German language in Germany but you put all the Swiss German languages in one pot. Are you aware that our dialects are very different from each other and that some are hardly understood by other Swiss people. The example you are giving is my dialect, which is the one spoken in the Canton of Zurich.
Missing a few, Alsatian being the whopper, but also Dalecarlian, Gutnish, Elfdalian... Plus wrong categorizations: Swiss should be Alemanic, Luxembourgish and Ripuarian should be accepted only if you accept Moselle Franconian, Lorraine Franconian, Rhine Franconian, Thuringian...
I find it remarkably interesting you have added Low Saxon as a dialect of German rather than being distinctive. In the Netherlands arguably more people speak Low Saxon dialects than they do in Germany nowadays and I think not many people would consider them speaking a dialect of German. This might also be true because a lot of the Dutch 'dialects' (by a lack of a better word) have had influence of Dutch and over the years the dialects have become more Dutch compared to its in historical origin. I am myself a historian and I find Low Saxon as a language interesting as there is not a real standardise version that is being thought of course. I would have never considered the language that my parents speak to be a German dialect. Maybe that is also because I grew up switching between the local dialect and Dutch all the time and that all the people in my region basically all speak Dutch. I could have a good conversation in Low Saxon. It is just that there is not a real need anymore.
If Ripuarian, Saxon etc are considered separate from German, Moselle Franconian should be as well since it is closer to Luxemburgish (which is considered one of the Moselle Franconian dialects) than it is to German.
There is no standard version, that is my personal translation based on the variant spoken in the Eifel region:
I would probably associate Pennsylvania German with Palatinate dialects. It is certainly distinct, although if I were to choose dialects from that level this quiz would be five times as long! Same goes for Hutterite German which is spoken in my local area (Bavarian dialect).
You should make Finnish Swedish its own separate thing because there it's a different dialect, it has lots of Finnish loan words and it's overall different from Standard Swedish
For the purposes of this quiz (and Jetpunk quizzes only), I have to be very conservative about what I label as a separate language. For quiz purposes this is grouped under Standard Swedish.
That is the flaw of language quizzes, language is far too abstract to be completely grouped like this. I know there are varients of English such as the Yorkshire dialect which could be included as its own thing, for example. Therefore I have to make cuts :(
I like that quiz, but its strange that it does not accept the original names of the languages/dialects. If it were so, I had about 5 points more (for example "Pfälzisch" instead of Palatian).
If you would want to add Switzerland to the brief comparison "Hed min Fründ dem Ma geschder s Buech ge?" would be the sentence. The structure is basically the same as in normal german.
I have to say that this is just in one dialect, swiss german can vary quite heavily per region in the country.
I appreciate the translation, I may add it to the quiz although one problem with adding too many 'dialects' is that they don't have one standardised form and the spelling and words may vary.
I feel like I should point out that the Norwegian translation is in Nynorsk, which is one of two Norwegian standards. There's barely a difference in this sentence (gav instead of ga as well as boka where it can also be boken in Bokmål), but there is a difference.
Nynorsk is the less used standard. Pretty much anything that has only one of the two uses Bokmål. There's nothing wrong with it, but if you wanna change it you can.
"Gav", like feminine "boka", is also used in bokmål. The dictionary gives both "gav" and "ga" as possible forms of the past tense. "Gav" is a bit more old-fashioned - looking up an n-gram with the national library shows "ga" overtaking "gav" in 1945, but "gav" is still used.
I'm not entirely sure Luxembourgish should be listed as a dialect of German, since it really isn't. I also feel like a Luxembourgish translation would be a good addition.
"Huet mäi Frënd dem Mann d'Buch gëschter ginn?" would be the sentence in Luxembourgish.
Yiddish should be added to this quiz. Although found mainly in ultra-orthodox jewish communities in the US, UK and Israel, it is still alive and well and definitely a germanic language :)
Yiddish is included, but it is greyed out because unfortunately (and due to the nature of its population distribution), it is too difficult to represent on the map.
The divisions are the major dialect groupings. The present-day Dutch language is in a small, flat area with fewer geographic barriers, so there wasn't a big chance for the dialects to diverge and become more different from one another. Historically, there was not a hard border between the Dutch and German language, and the dialects slowly transitioned from village to village, but today the languages are standardised and the unique dialects are being overtaken by the standard forms.
I made it transparent to show it as a minority language, and I used a historic range to draw the map (although the spread of the language used to be much larger).
I live exactly where the map shows the "Silesian German" is, and I assure You, that practically all people who live there do speak Polish and do not speak Silesian German or any version of German at all. And there are hardly any real native Germans in Silesia since the end of 1940s. Note, that only some people may speak this language in Saxony in Germany. Others were moved by Stalin from the today Poland to the today Germany many years ago.
Sometimes I find excellent sources where language syntax and structure is compared through accurately translated sentences, other times I must use Google Translate. More unfortunate yet is when I think I find a good source, but it turns out to be massively flaed (such as my Slavic language samples, although some of that was my own doing).
I think I just need a friend from every language so I can continue to make works such as this, although that may exceed the number of close contacts psychologists reckon we are able to have :D
The problem is, that if you have to say it in correct Danish, you would use different words that does not fit this constructed sentence. You could say "Gav min ven bogen til manden i går?" (i.e give to the man), but actually you would probably always ask "Fik manden bogen af min ven i går?" (i.e Did the man receive the book from my friend yesterday) which I guess have a slightly different meaning
Also I tried Faroe, Faroesian, Faroeic... Just not Faroese :|
Hät minge Fründ däm Mann gester dat Boch gegovve?
Bavarian: Håd mei Freind im Må gesting 's Buach gem?
Low Saxon: Hett mien Fründ den Mann güstern dat Book geven?
Swiss German: Hät min Fründ em Ma gester s Buech gee?
To be fair, the spelling convention is not very commonly known among people that write in the dialect. You will most often see for the [j] realization, or for [ç]/[x], and usually still for [ʁ].
Surprised Low German has so little variation compared to High
Anyways, if you want to comment here that's fine, but if it's easier over Discord, you can just find me (I joined the JetPunk Disc recently) and DM me. IDRC either way, whatever's more convenient for you!
If Ripuarian, Saxon etc are considered separate from German, Moselle Franconian should be as well since it is closer to Luxemburgish (which is considered one of the Moselle Franconian dialects) than it is to German.
There is no standard version, that is my personal translation based on the variant spoken in the Eifel region:
Hät mengen Frend däm Maan jester et Booch jen?
Thanks for your comment!
That is the flaw of language quizzes, language is far too abstract to be completely grouped like this. I know there are varients of English such as the Yorkshire dialect which could be included as its own thing, for example. Therefore I have to make cuts :(
I have to say that this is just in one dialect, swiss german can vary quite heavily per region in the country.
Nynorsk is the less used standard. Pretty much anything that has only one of the two uses Bokmål. There's nothing wrong with it, but if you wanna change it you can.
"Huet mäi Frënd dem Mann d'Buch gëschter ginn?" would be the sentence in Luxembourgish.