Pain au Chocolat vs Chocolatine
While most of the nation, and foreigners to France, might say “pain au chocolat”, a stronghold in the southwest has withstood, pridefully, standing to the term “chocolatine”.
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Languages
Tautological Geography: When Place Names Say the Same Thing Twice
Ever wondered why we call it the “Sahara Desert” when Sahara already means desert? Join us on a journey through the world’s most redundant place names and learn how colonial history created these linguistic oddities.
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Countries that use the Latin script
The Latin script, also known as the Roman script, is the writing system originally developed by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. It has since become the most widely used writing system in the world, employed for various languages, in
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Dialects of Austria
Most of Austria speaks Bavarian dialects, but the westernmost state sounds almost like a different language. Here’s a look at all 11 dialect zones mapped across the country.
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Languages of Mongolia
Mongolia is the world’s most sparsely populated sovereign state — about 2 people per square kilometer (5.2 people per sq mi). But despite all that empty space, it fits ten languages inside its borders, from Kazakh in the far west to Tungusic-speaking Evenki communities in the north.
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Ye Olde Netherlands: Dutch Town Names in Their Oldest Written Forms
Every Dutch town on a modern road sign is the latest draft of something considerably older, worn down by centuries of spoken language. This map by Victor van Werkhooven uses documented historical sources to show what the country would look like if that process had never started.
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Language difficulty rankings
The U.S. Foreign Service Institute has spent over 70 years teaching languages to diplomats, making their data about as close to real-world experience as you can get. Their rankings show a dramatic gap: Spanish takes around 24 weeks of intensive study, while Arabic or Mandarin requires 88 weeks.
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Knowledge of different languages in the European Union
Knowledge of English Knowledge of French Knowledge of German Knowledge of Italian Knowledge of Spanish Knowledge of Russian Reddit user:
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Language families spoken in Africa
The indigenous languages of Africa are divided into 6 major language families: Afroasiatic, Nilo Saharan, Niger-Congo A, Niger-Congo B (Bantu),
Read MoreLanguages of North America, before European colonization
There are approximately 296 spoken indigenous languages north of Mexico, 269 of which are grouped into 29 families. The Na-Dené, Algic, and Uto-Aztecan families are the largest in terms of several languages.
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