If lions could talk: attempts at mapping over the borders

1
If lions could talkattempts at mapping over the
borders

• Keynote address by Danny Dorling
• University of Sheffield
• Borders and Identities Conference
• Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 8 January 2010

2
Introduction

• How would you draw a map of the capital city of
  the United States of America that represented the
  human geography of that city? Some of those who
  have been there say
• In Washington D.C. the invisible borders of
  segregation are now so wide that for adolescents,
  left on the wrong side of the tracks downtown
  does not exit. There is no talking over the
  border. The life experiences are so sharply
  different that it is not clear what the residents
  of the two sides could talk to each other about
  were they to meet and stop to converse. It is
  becoming again as if one side were animals,
  lions, suddenly given the ability to speak
  and()
• if lions could talk, we would not understand
  them. Tourists maps of Washington exist with
  areas shaded to suggest you dont go there.

() as Ludwig Wittgenstein apparently remarked,
expanded upon in Bauman, Z. (2000 (2nd
edition)). Globalization the human consequences.
Cambridge, Polity Press. (page 86).
3
Introduction

• This talk concerns mapping lives to try to make
  them comparable across borders. Globally, and
  within particular cities, peoples lives can be
  so different today that it is unlikely that two
  people taken from different sides of the border
  could easily understand each others concerns.
  Maps of mortality worldwide, of cultural divides
  along the English midlands, and of wealth divides
  within the heart of London are discussed in this
  talk which asks how we can better portray the
  extent and existence of both perceived and actual
  socio-political boundaries in ways that people
  from different sides of the divides can
  understand. The talk concludes with a
  justification for attempting to produce new world
  maps of what we think most people speak
  everywhere (taken from the website
  www.worldmapper.org).

4
Introduction

• The territory size in the following series of
  maps shows the proportion of the displayed
  language that are spoken there. The maps are
  sorted in an order going from languages with the
  least native speakers towards the ones with the
  most native speakers, covering a total of 106
  languages.
• All maps are part of the worldmapper project,
  which is a collaborative work between the
  following people
• Danny Dorling, University of Sheffield
• Mark Newman, University of Michigan
• Graham Allsopp, University of Sheffield
• Anna Barford, University of Sheffield
• Ben Wheeler, University of Sheffield
• John Pritchard, University of Sheffield
• Benjamin Hennig, University of Sheffield
• All language maps shown here as well as further
  notes can be found online at
• http//www.worldmapper.org/extraindex/text_languag
  e.html

5
Basemaps Land area
6
Basemaps Population
7
Mapping languages

• "A language is a dialect with an army and a
  navy.
• (Unknown associate of Max Weinreich)

8
A journey through the world of mouth
9
Indigenous living languages

• This map uses data from 'Ethnologue Languages of
  the World', and shows the number of languages
  considered indigenous to each country that are
  still spoken there. Due to issues of language
  identification, it is possible to dispute the
  data used here, and a review of Ethnologue by
  Campbell and Grondona (2008) does just that they
  claim "... the number of indigenous ('living')
  languages of different countries is inflated ...".

10
Indigenous living languages
The map presents a good picture of linguistic
diversity. Papua New Guinea has nearly 10 (820)
of the world's indigenous living languages, so
that there are only an average of 7000 speakers
per language living there. Indonesia (737),
Nigeria (510), and India (415) also have a large
number of native languages. At the other end of
the scale, Belarus, Maldives, DPR Korea and Holy
See each have only one indigenous living
language. 8,592 native speakers are represented
in this map.
11
Tuvaluan 12,000 native speakers
12
Tuvaluan

• Tuvaluan is a language of Tuvalu. Roughly 90 of
  the population there speak it as a first language.

13
Tuvaluan
Tuvaluan is spoken by roughly 11 thousand people,
most of them on the islands of Tuvalu in the
south-central Pacific. The language has also been
taken in small numbers to Nauru, New Zealand,
Kiribati, Fiji and Australia.
14
Tongan 142,000 native speakers
15
Tongan

• Tongan is a language of Tonga. Roughly 98 of the
  population there speak it as a first language.

16
Tongan
Tongan is the national language of Tonga. It is a
member of the same language family (Polynesian)
as Niuean, Hawaiian, Maori, Samoan and Tahitian.
It is spoken by roughly 130 thousand people in at
least 7 territories. After Tonga, the largest
population (around 24 thousand) is in the United
States. Other smaller populations are in New
Zealand, Fiji, the United Kingdom, Samoa and
Australia.
17
Icelandic 315,000 native speakers
18
Icelandic

• Icelandic is a language of Iceland. Roughly 97
  of the population there speak it as a first
  language.

19
Icelandic
Icelandic is spoken by just over 3 million
people, in at least 7 territories. Outside
Iceland, speakers are also recorded as living in
Denmark, the United States, the United Kingdom,
Canada and Norway, mostly through relatively
recent emigration.
20
Samoan 384,000 native speakers
21
Samoan

• Samoan is a language of Samoa. Roughly 100 of
  the population there speak it as a first language.

22
Samoan
Samoan (or Samoan) is spoken by around 380
thousand people in total, most of them in Samoa
and American Samoa. There are also nearly 100
thousand speakers in New Zealand, nearly 30
thousand in Australia, and a small number in Fiji.
23
Maltese 451,000 native speakers
24
Maltese

• Maltese is a language of Malta. Roughly 93 of
  the population there speak it as a first language.

25
Maltese
Maltese is the language of Malta. It is a Semitic
language, with some of its vocabulary borrowed
from Italian and English. It is spoken by at
least 440 thousand people in at least six
territories. As well as Malta, it is spoken
(roughly in order of descending numbers of
speakers) in Australia, Italy, Canada, the United
Kingdom and Tunisia.
26
Welsh 482,000 native speakers
27
Welsh

• Welsh is a language of the United Kingdom.
  Roughly 0.8 of the population there speak it as
  a first language.

28
Welsh
Welsh is a Celtic language, spoken by roughly
half a million people as their first language.
The majority of those are in Wales, where an
effort has been made to revive the language.
There are also thought to be around 200,000 in
England, many of them in London or near the
border with Wales. There is a Welsh community in
the Chubut Valley in Argentine Patagonia,
descendents of a group who left Wales in 1865.
There are also Welsh speakers recorded in the
censuses of the United States, Canada and
Australia.
29
Yiddish 506,000 native speakers
30
Yiddish

• Yiddish is a language of Israel. Roughly 3 of
  the population there speak it as a first language.

31
Yiddish
Yiddish has its routes in tenth-century Germany,
where Jews from France and Northern Italy
established communities, developing a language
with elements of German, Laaz, Hebrew, and
Aramaic. The language spread and changed as Jews
migrated eastward to escape persecution. Before
World War II there were 11 to 13 million Yiddish
speakers (Jacobs, 2005), but The Holocaust led to
a dramatic reduction in the number of speakers.
There are now roughly 500,000 people speaking
Yiddish as their first language, in at least 15
territories.
32
Estonian 958,000 native speakers
33
Estonian

• Estonian is a language of Estonia. Roughly 67 of
  the population there speak it as a first language.

34
Estonian
Estonian is spoken by approximately 950 thousand
people, in at least 9 territories. It is the
official language of Estonia, and spoken by the
majority of the population there. After Estonia,
the largest number of speakers are in Russia.
There are also smaller numbers of speakers in
Canada, the United States, Finland, Latvia,
Sweden and the United Kingdom.
35
Chokwe 1,057,000 native speakers
36
Chokwe

• Chokwe is a language of Democratic Republic of
  Congo. Roughly 1 of the population there speak
  it as a first language.

37
Chokwe
Chokwe is the language of the ethnic group by the
same name in the Central African area of Angola
(where it is one of six national languages),
south-east Democratic Republic of Congo,
North-western Zambia, and a small number in
Namibia. Many speakers are bi-lingual, also
speaking French, Portuguese or English.
38
Mandinka 1,286,000 native speakers
39
Mandinka

• Mandinka is a language of Senegal. Roughly 6 of
  the population there speak it as a first language.

40
Mandinka
Mandinka (or Mandingo), is part of a group of
languages of West Africa known collectively as
Manding. it is the main language of Gambia. It is
spoken by roughly 1.2 million people in total
also in Senegal and the central-northern part of
Guinea-Bissau. There is also a small number of
speakers in the United Kingdom.
41
Tibetan 1,312,000 native speakers
42
Tibetan

• Standard Tibetan is a language of China. Roughly
  0.1 of the population there speak it as a first
  language.

43
Tibetan
Standard Tibetan (or Central Tibetan) is the
language of the Tibet Autonomous Region of China.
It is spoken by roughly 1.3 million people in
total. Most speakers are in Tibet, but many
refugees have settled in India (mostly in the
state of Sikkim), Nepal, the United States and
Canada, since China took control of Tibet in 1959.
44
Latvian 1,324,000 native speakers
45
Latvian

• Latvian is a language of Latvia. Roughly 61 of
  the population there speak it as a first language.

46
Latvian
Latvian is the official language of Latvia, and
spoken by around 1.4 million people there. The
only other territories where speakers number over
20,000 are Australia and Russia. Other small
populations mean that it is spoken in around 12
territories in total.
47
Soninke 1,416,000 native speakers
48
Soninke

• Soninke is a language of Mali. Roughly 6 of the
  population there speak it as a first language.

49
Soninke
Soninke is spoken by just over a million people
in West Africa, over half of them in Mali. The
remainder, in descending order of number of
speakers, are in north-east Senegal, Cote
d'Ivoire, Gambia, south-central Mauritania and
Guinea-Bissau. Soninke is a national language of
Senegal and of Mali.
50
Afar 1,521,000 native speakers
51
Afar

• Afar is a language of Ethiopia. Roughly 1.4 of
  the population there speak it as a first language.

52
Afar
Afar is spoken by roughly 1.5 million largely
nomadic people in the Horn of Africa (Northeast
Africa) in Ethiopia (in the regions of Tigray,
Welo, and Western Hararghe), Eritrea and
Djibouti. There is also evidence of a very small
number of speakers in the United Kingdom.
53
Macedonian 1,752,000 native speakers
54
Macedonian

• Macedonian is a language of the Former Yugoslav
  Republic of Macedonia . Roughly 67 of the
  population there speak it as a first language.

55
Macedonian
Macedonian is the official language of the Former
Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. It is sometimes
considered a dialect of Bulgarian, and was only
recognised as a distinct language in 1944. There
are nearly 2 million speakers, in around 13
territories. Outside Macedonia, the largest
populations of speakers are in Greece, Germany,
Australia and Italy, with smaller populations in
Canada and the United States.
56
Domari 1,785,000 native speakers
57
Domari

• Domari is a language of The Islamic Republic of
  Iran. Roughly 2 of the population there speak it
  as a first language.

58
Domari
Domari is the language of the Dom people, who
migrated from India across the Middle East. The
largest group are now located in Iran, where 1.3
million of the total 1.8 million speakers reside.
Large groups are also in Egypt, and India, where
the Dom are known as 'Domba. Comparisons are
made with European Gypsies or 'Rom' both are
descended from Indian traders. The names Dom and
Rom are related, although the groups are thought
to have migrated at different points in time. Due
to the region in which Domari is spoken, Arabic
now has a large influence on the language.
59
Slovenian 1,940,000 native speakers
60
Slovenian

• Slovenian is a language of Slovenia. Roughly 91
  of the population there speak it as a first
  language.

61
Slovenian
Slovene (or Slovenian) is spoken by nearly 2
million people in at least 8 territories. The
vast majority are in Slovenia, the largest
populations elsewhere are in the nearby
territories of Italy (around a 100 thousand),
Hungary, Croatia and Austria. Smaller numbers
have migrated to Canada, the United States, and
Argentina.
62
Brahui 2,217,000 native speakers
63
Brahui

• Brahui is a language of Pakistan. Roughly 1.3 of
  the population there speak it as a first language.

64
Brahui
According to estimates from Ethnologue, Brahui is
spoken by around 2.2 million people, most of them
in Balochistan, in west Pakistan, and nearby
regions of Afghanistan and Iran, and a much
smaller number in Qatar. Andronov (2006) states
that the exact number of Brahui speakers is hard
to assess as the majority of Brahuis are
bilingual in Balochi, and identify themselves as
ethnic Balochis.
65
Aymara 2,329,000 native speakers
66
Aymara

• Aymara is a language of Bolivia. Roughly 21 of
  the population there speak it as a first language.

67
Aymara
There are roughly 2.2 million Aymara speakers,
the vast majority in a contiguous area
encompassing Western Bolivia, South-east Peru
(centering on Lake Titicaca), and north-east
Chile. There are also a small number in Salta
Province in north-west Argentina. There are
similarities with Quechua, although this may have
more to do with close proximity than a similar
linguistic heritage.