8 ms·
Show HN: I made a website that color-codes the world by language
- jacknews 3y agoSome people might be surprised that you can communicate with the whole of Canada, in French. But not Algeria?
- masukomi 3y agoEspecially the residents of Canada and Algeria. ;)
- florianwueest 3y agoFixed :)
- lionkor 3y agoIn 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.
- freelanddev 3y agoInteresting, I had the same initial thought :)
- mysterydip 3y agoMaybe solid color for officially supported, striped/hashed for "unofficial but would get you pretty far"?
- wongarsu 3y agoOr 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 3y agoAgree 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.
- fensgrim 3y ago> 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 3y agoBeen 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.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- freelanddev 3y agoThis 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.
- josefrichter 3y agoI wonder why French doesn't show Morocco and Algeria? In both countries, some 30-50% of people speak French.
- josefrichter 3y agoAh I see, these are just "official" languages. Otherwise probably the whole planet would be highlighted for English.
- sam_lowry_ 3y agoHighlighting 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.
- zarzavat 3y agoInterface language != spoken language. If you are Ukrainian you might choose an interface in Russian or English for many reasons, familiarity, quality, etc. Maybe they don’t want to context-switch. For most Ukrainians, Russian is (was?) a happy medium between being a language that they understand, and a language that is well supported in localizations. I speak en-GB but I prefer an interface in en-US. Yet if you asked me to speak en-US with all its grammatical, lexical and phonological differences intact I would fail because my understanding is read-only.
- sam_lowry_ 3y agoen_GB vs en_US is largely a locale choice. Many developers in EU choose en_IE to have English translations, €, Monday 1st day of the week and comma as fractional separator. Ukrainian vs Russian is a cultural choice. I sm sure that 80/20 ratio is old news by now, anyway.
- ozymandias8 3y agoThe 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 3y agoYeah, India is done badly by the OP.
- garyfirestorm 3y agoindia 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
- florianwueest 3y agoWorking on it. Will add provinces to the map to add more granularity. Online in ~1 week.
- paulette449 3y agoSeems 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
- gdprrrr 3y agoNo love for Piraha and Ainu :(
- thih9 3y agoPiraha: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirahã_language https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirahã_language > Pirahã 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 3y agoAlmost 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.
- smallerfish 3y agoWhy does Honduras get highlighted for English while Costa Rica does not? Both are marked as "moderate" on English fluency.
- marginalia_nu 3y agoA decent proportion of young Scandinavians speak English. Not all of them, and it definitely doesn't extend as a generality to older people.
- benatkin 3y agoEh. 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 3y agoThis 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,
- 3y ago
- phantomathkg 3y agoCantonese is not in the list… and I bet a bunch of dialect won’t be there as well… this sound rather not completed…
- florianwueest 3y agoFixed the cantonese thing :)
- vincengomes 3y agoGood Luck to whoever thinks of getting around in South India by speaking Hindi.
- alexb_ 3y agoIf this is using "official language", America should not be highlighted green for English.
- BrandoElFollito 3y agoIsn't it that the US do not have any official language?
- tboyd47 3y agoAwesome 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 3y agoBy 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 3y agoWhile 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 3y ago> 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.
- skilled 3y agoThe "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 3y agotwo 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.
- OkayPhysicist 3y agoYour 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.
- 1-more 3y ago> 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, ĉu vi parolas Esperanton?" when you walk into a shop or ask for directions?
- uxx 3y agocyprus is english, should be greek bro
- florianwueest 3y agoFixed :)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- benatkin 3y agoFirst 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 3y agoThe 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 3y agoIndeed. And at least one is missing. I just listened to a BBC podcast episode about Kaaps. https://player.fm/series/the-documentary-podcast-1301446/speaking-for-themselves https://player.fm/series/the-documentary-podcast-1301446/spe... The Wikipedia page seems to get it wrong. :(
- NiceWayToDoIT 3y agoEnglish - 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 ...
- sonicshadow 3y agoI'm just grabbing the popcorn
- tomovo 3y agoCrimea is not Russia. It's Ukraine. Please get it right.
- chillbill 3y agoI thought they voted to be part of Russia?
- xwdv 3y agoCrazy 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.
- ipince 3y agoI 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.
- aodonnell2536 3y agoI’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.
- nashashmi 3y agoMore 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.
- florianwueest 3y agoComing soon!
- nashashmi 3y agoI don’t think you’ll be able to pull that off because you don’t have such a granular data majority of the time. For example, Sindhi is a language spoken in just one province. Punjabi is a language native to two provinces in two countries.
- bluepod4 3y agoThey only speak English in Nigeria?
- florianwueest 3y agoFixed :)
- nerdbert 3y agoEnglish gets you farther in the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, etc., than it does in India.
- Gigablah 3y agoApparently Singapore has sunk into the ocean.
- florianwueest 3y agoFixed :)
- rob74 3y agoThis 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.
- itake 3y agoBali doesn't speak Bahasa, they speak Balinese.
- dahfizz 3y agoUsing 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/GPI-2023-Web.pdf https://www.visionofhumanity.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/...
- atonse 3y agoDoes the militarization of a country or its capacity to produce nuclear weapons matter as far as a destination for travel though? Genuinely asking.
- dahfizz 3y agoI 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.
- 4RealFreedom 3y agoOne 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.
- itairall 3y ago[dead]
- fensgrim 3y agomy 2¢: 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 3y agoAlso 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).
- butz 3y agoWhere's Andorra and Liechtenstein?
- florianwueest 3y agoFixed :)
- ftyers 3y agoSpeaking 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...
- wenderen 3y agoCollecting 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 3y ago3½. Just because you speak passable German, doesn't mean you can always understand the Swiss (even when they speak Swiss German!).
- BrandoElFollito 3y agoEven if you speak native German, you will not understand a seizable part of Swiss who will be speaking their language (French, Italian, Romansh)
- Ntuthuko_hlela 3y agoI just tried it, amazing work mate.
- florianwueest 3y agoThanks man!
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- blarghyblarg 3y agoToday 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.
- florianwueest 3y ago:'D
- macintux 3y agoMy first test was Spanish; when the U.S. didn't highlight, I knew the comment section was going to be a mess.
- aodonnell2536 3y agoUnited 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 3y agoIt 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 3y agoI 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.
- petesergeant 3y agoYou'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.
- kiliancs 3y agoLanguages 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-radio/viggo-mortensen-he-fet-neteja-compartir-tajuda-a-treure-el-dolor-el-dubte-laillament/video/6062337/ https://www.ccma.cat/catradio/alacarta/el-mati-de-catalunya-...
- BrandoElFollito 3y agoWhere is Catalan spoken in France?
- nickserv 3y agoTraditionally 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.
- BrandoElFollito 3y agoHa, one learns every day! Thanks a lot - I never knew that. For reference (Fr): https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pays_catalans https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pays_catalans
- janalsncm 3y agoOP, 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.
- sepsol 3y agoSo, apparently Afghans and Iranians don't speak the same language, weird
- simne 3y agoMost 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.
- O1111OOO 3y ago78 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.
- HocusLocus 3y agoLooking for an old COBOL community where I can settle on the border and introduce to Perl and mySQL. With no Python communities nearby. Please help.
- defrost 3y agoFound 0 matching results for Yolngu. Found 0 matching results for Yolungu. Hell, even bird brains can speak Yolngu: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbSxc6Y1aVA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbSxc6Y1aVA
- whiskysong 3y agoI'm on Firefox mobile on Android. When I tap on a country and then tap outside the pop-up, focus switches back to the language text box. I would expect focus to stay on the map so I can select another country. Obviously this whole comment section is focusing on the problem of defining spoken language, but you have created a great proof of concept of an interesting idea. Looking forward to seeing how it evolves.
- ahaapple 3y agoVery interesting application. bug why use language to distinguish the world?
- florianwueest 3y agoFor travelling purposes & if you're a language learner - or generally interested in languages. Also, it gives you a sense of history - as the languages that countries speak are influenced by past colonization.
- ahaapple 3y agoMake sense, thank you!
- mdpm 3y ago[flagged]
- chillbill 3y agoFrench is not an official language in Lebanon. And most people speak Engnlish.