File talk:Languages of Europe no legend.png

See also

• Inaccurate
• Extremly wrong
• Good map but many errors

Correction concerning Hungary

In the current picture one county of Hungary (Békés) is associated with the romanian language which is completely untrue. Also, if you compare the original pictrue with the updated one you can see that Upper Hungary (northeastern corner of Hungary) is also associated with the romanians which is again untrue. Even more the majority of the Romanian-Hungarian and Ukrainian-Hungarian border area is inhabited mostly (definately more than 50%) by Hungarians. These are the mistakes I've corrected. Nyiz 00:46, 6 January 2008 (UTC) copy-pasted from Commons:Help desk by Jastrow (Λέγετε) 16:30, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Gibraltar

Could someone edit the map in a way to distinguish Gibraltar from Spain. I think it is important to show that English is the main and only official language of Gibraltar. Thanks. --Gibmetal77 15:14, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Could one of the recent editors please do this, thanks. --Gibmetal 77^talk 10:20, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Good map but many errors

this map has good potential, but we need to weed out the errors before it becomes acceptable for use in articles. I reproduce the criticism from en:File talk:Languages of Europe no legend.png and en:Talk:European ethnic groups:

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• en:Breton All of Brittany is marked at Breton speaking, that has not been the case for about 1000 years. Traditionally, Brittany was divided into one half speaking Breton one half speaking Gallo, a Romance language/French dialect. Today, French is the most spoken lanugage even in the Western half that used to be Breton-speaking but this map extends Breton not only to all areas of that half but even to the half that always was Gallo-speaking.
• en:Irish To see where Irish really is spoken, have a look at this article: en:Gaeltacht. Many of the areas now colored as Irish-speaking are more English in language than London and haven't had any Irish-speaking communities for more than 100 years.
• Catalan Whereas the maps for Irish and Breton reflect what was the case between 200 and 1000 years ago, Catalan is one step worse as it has been extended into large areas where it was never spoken. That part of map looks particularly silly.
• Italy The German speaking has been doubled, looks like the creator seems to think that all of the area Austria ceeded to Italy in 1919 is German-speaking. That's not the case, it's only the Northern half.

On a more general level, it is very problematic that the map seems to lack any principle. What time period is is supposed to show? In Eastern Europe, it is very up-to-date and show the situation as it is today. In Western Europe, it is very outdated and shows the sitation between 1000 years ago (Breton) to 100-150 years ago (Irish, Scottish Gaelic, German and Dutch in France) coupled with some inventions that never existed (Catalan, German in Italy). Before we use this map, these issues need to be addressed. JdeJ (talk) 08:57, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Estonian and Latvian are today divided by the border, there are no major groups of Estonians in Latvia (or vice versa). H2ppyme (talk) 21:11, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

The political border between France and Italy look as it was before 1860. The linguistic border between French and German is as about 300 years ago. Arno Lagrange ✉ 16:49, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

The en:Cornish still speak their language (it died out but was resurrected) and why does it show the tip of Scotland as speaking Frisian? Sigurd Dragon Slayer (talk) 19:23, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

The map, however, is not just conservative in its treatment of minorities. At times it's about 800 years wrong (Breton, Estonian) and sometimes it claims areas for languages that never have been spoken there (Catalan, German). Let me list just a few rather obvious errors

• Spain. The Catalan area as indicated on the map has little to do with reality. The map claims that most of southern Aragon is Catalan-speaking, just as part of eastern en:Castille. Those parts of Spain have never been Catalan-speaking and most certainly aren't now. In contrast, Catalan is still very strong all the way down to Elche, but the whole area between Elche and Gandia is marked as Spanish-speaking here.
• France. The eastern half of en:Britanny has not been en:Breton-speaking for the last 800 years, the traditional language there is Gallo. The map is about 200 years wrong when it comes to Dutch in France. As for Alsace-German, the map has little to do with any linguistic reality, it simply outlines the areas annexed to Germany in 1870. These areas are thoroughly French-speaking today and have been so for quite some time. Corsica is listed as Italian-speaking, and although Corse is close related to Italian, it's neither Italian nor the dominating language on Corsica. For ethnic purposes, I can assure you that people in Alsace don't identify as Germans in any way, nor do Corsicans feel Italians.
• Italy. The map overlooks the Sardinian language completely. The French-speaking area of Italy isn't even a third of the area shown on the map, it's restricted to ][Val d'Aosta]} and retreating even there. Just as in France, the German speech-area takes on almost absurd proportions. While Südtirol definitely is German-speaking, Trentino is just as Italian-speaking despite being marked as German on the map. And the relatively large German area in Val d'Aosta is pure fantasy, despite a few settlements having existed there previously.
• Switzerland. German is once again inflated. While only a small part of French-speaking Switerland is coloured as German-speaking, it's strange to see that en:Bosco Gurin occupies about a fourth of Ticino. The population of is 79 and the majority of them speak Italian these days.
• Belgium. Once again German is extending far beyond en:Eupen-Malmedy into areas that never were German-speaking
• Scotland. 90% of the areas marked as Gaelic-speaking were still Gaelic-speaking 100 years ago, but are more than 98% English-speaking today. In many of the parts marked as Gaelic-speaking here, there isn't a single Gaelic-speaker left. Gaelic isn't a majority language anywhere on the mainland, only in the en:Outer Hebrides.
• Ireland. The Irish dialects of Clare, Limerick, Sligo, Tipperary and Eastern Cork have been extinct for more than 50 years now. About 10% of the area coloured on the map here is Irish-speaking.
• Poland and Lithuania. What language is the brown colour meant to represent? Turkish? That area includes Vilnius and last time I checked, people in the Lithuanian capital were speaking Lithuanian and not Turkish. If the creator of the map thought about the en:Karaites, this is as out of proportion as Bosco Gurin in Switzerland.
• Latvia. There haven't been any Estonian speaking areas of Latvia for the last 600 years.
• Sweden. There are only four municipalities where Sami is official and it's not the majority language anywhere in Sweden, yet one third of the country is claimed as Sami-speaking here.

In short, the map is far from just conservative, it's wrong for almost all European countries. And for ethnic groups, it would be an even bigger disaster. I doubt anyone feels like telling the Scots and Irish that they are English unless they speak Gaelic, tell the Corsicans that they are Italians, tell people in Alsace, Lorraine, Trentino, Val d'Aosta, Ticino, Luxemburg and Luxembourg that they are Germans, tell people in Vilnius that they are Turks and so on. The map has been removed from all other Wikipedia articles and I see no reason why it should reappear here.JdeJ (talk) 18:41, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

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the map's strength is that it represents historical distribution of languages. But the problem is, of course, that there can only be one colour per pixel, while many areas of Europe of course have a multilingual history. This needs to be addressed, but it is unfair to shoot down this map over something it cannot provide. We could agree to make this map aim for, say, a representation of the situation around 1850. --Dbachmann (talk) 10:20, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

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I agree with the words "good map with errors". It would be good to improve this map. I also noticed errors concerning romance languages. The map could be corrected about romance languages following File:Romance 20c en.png. It can also help to correct extension of Breton, German (in Belgium, France, Switzerland and Italy) and French in Italy (Aoste Valley is a formerly Arpitan speaking country (with few German speaking villages), where French was spoken but fast no more). It shows a fantasy extension of Catalan (south-westly and northly). The color legend says "Catalan and Franco-provençal", but the area is only an extended Catalan area. Languedocien and Arpitan (Franco-provençal) don't appear and are considered as French. It would be better to distinguish French (oïl languages) from Occitan (Languedocian and Provençal) and from Arpitan (or Franco-Provençal) and from Catalan. Arno Lagrange ✉ 16:44, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

http://www.muturzikin.com/carteseurope/europe.htm could be a very useful ressource to redesign entirely the map.

This map can't be used, it doesn't describe the situation at a time. In France, you could say it's a medieval map with breton expended (even over areas that were always gallo) or flemish extended (let's forget many other errors). But then you look at the east and you see Kaliningrad russian, something that happened only after 1945! Two languages at least are missing: cornish and Occitan. And I can't understand why Catalan was supposed to be mixed with Franco-Provençal, it's a total mistake. Those two languages are very different and in two very different areas, it's occitan and Catalan that are very similar. Such a mix is finally a huge mess. I try to upload a new version with a modified western part but til now, I didn't managed. I'll try again at home. Gato76680 (talk) 10:28, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Concerning Indo-European languages elsewhere

Just added a legend in Dutch, hope you don't mind ^.~*.

Btw, aren't we ought to add North African as well, as it's a Germanic language; the daughter language of the Dutch language which is an Indo-European language... We would have to add an extra map... but... it's just an idea ^.^.

Sorry, I got lost here. What North African Germanic language are you talking about? Conlangs don't figure here, you know?

I guess you mean "Afrikaans", and thus one of the many languages in South-Africa? Anyway, the title is "Languages of Europe". So it doesn't make sense to add that. Otherwise, you'd have to add every country that has French, English, Spanish as a language as well. Viv3210 (talk) 14:02, 3 March 2014 (UTC)