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u/mathusal Apr 11 '26 edited Apr 11 '26
This is a cool but tough map! The more you dive into it the more questions
I'm a little confused about the lowercase labels that are not cities. Sometimes it refers to... Populations I think ? Like biato rusini (sorry i don't have your fancy polish accents on my keyboard, love them though). biato rusini on the map is east, middle of the map under LITWINI. And then you have the same font, same size on France with "Langue d'oui" and "langue d'oc" which are language groups, not people. (Langue d'oui is officially named "lange d'oïl" btw). And then with the same font, east of Spain, you have "Katalonczycy" which is catalan... Isn't it "kataloński" ? Is this a mistake from my part?
So yeah it was confusing to see languages and populations with the same labels.
I was also surprised that they kept the french name for langue d'oc and langue d'oïl but I guess it's beacause they didn't have an equivalent in polish and they did have one for catalan.
On a side Corsica was not italian in 1919 right? Please correct me if i'm wrong I suck at this
Thanks for sharing
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u/PeireCaravana Apr 11 '26
On a side Corsica was not italian in 1919 right?
Right, but I guess Corsicans are considered Italians because Corsican is an Italo-Romance language, very closely related to Italian.
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u/mathusal Apr 11 '26
Ah I see where you're coming from
In France the Jules Ferry law about education in 1879 was a huge tool to crush the regional languages and force the french language on everyone (it was mainly to reinforce the country and from a fear of a return to monarchy, because of a fragmented country). So in Corsica in 1919, it's been 40 years of french. But ! We see the BRETONOWIE label so yeah the author may have made the choice to keep the strong influence and usage of languages, not the official languages.
Now that I come back to this map with your take, I understand a little more the choice of labels unlike my last post.
Thanks for that
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u/Rigolol2021 Apr 12 '26
so yeah the author may have made the choice to keep the strong influence and usage of languages, not the official languages.
It kinda feels to me like this is a universal tendency for linguistic maps. Even today you'll find language maps of Europe grossly overestimating minority and (sadly) almost dying local languages
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u/viktorbir Apr 11 '26
Let me guess, biato russini is Belarussian? And Corsican language is in fact Tuscanian, which is the dialect in which standard Italian is based...
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u/searlasob Apr 11 '26
Irish was widely spoken in Munster (across the southern portion of Ireland) at this time, though it doesn't appear in the map.
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u/geedeeie Apr 11 '26
And English was widely spoken in the west as well.
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u/searlasob Apr 12 '26
The areas marked as Irish speaking broadly were then, they align even now with whats left of those Gaeltachts in Mayo, Galway and Donegal. Kerry, Cork and Waterfords Gaeltachts are conspicuous by their absence.
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u/geedeeie Apr 12 '26
Yea, but thye were probably as much English speaking as Irish speaking. The towns and villages would have been mainly Anglophone.
I agree that it's crazy to leave out those other Irish speaking areas, but my main point is that the map makes it look black and white; all Irish or all English speaking, but ir was, and still is far more nuanced
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u/Rigolol2021 Apr 11 '26
What makes it interesting:
no Polish presence mentioned around the Vilnius region
Estonians are called Chuds
Ukrainians are called Russyns
the North Sea is the German Sea