Tag: language and dialect
-
Where languages come from: every language on one map, with its family tree, its future and its homeland
7,674 spoken languages, 421 separate lineages, 52.1% endangered. I mapped every language in Glottolog with its family tree, endangerment, speaker numbers and the proposed homelands of the great language families.
-
Dinner, tea or supper? What Britain calls its evening meal
12,522 answers from the Our Dialects survey, mapped: tea in the north, dinner in the south, a tea line across the Midlands, and no sign of dinner moving north.
-
Ginnel, snicket or twitten? Britain’s alley words on the street signs
I mapped all 3,382 named alleys in the UK by the word in their name. 88% of twittens are in Sussex, every chare is in the North East, and London’s 375 named alleys use a regional word just 2 times.
-
Avon means river: the oldest words in the British landscape
England’s towns have English names, but 37 of its 60 biggest rivers kept names older than English. I mapped every named river and stream in the UK by the words in their names, from the ancient Avons and Esks to the Viking beck line.
-
Black rivers, white springs: the colours of the world’s place names
I found 138,453 places named after a colour, in 20 languages. Rivers run black, springs run white, the commonest colour name on Earth is Cerro Colorado, and a fifth of Russia’s red is revolutionary.
