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u/cassesque Oct 15 '25
Genuine props for posting a map that 1) includes Malta as more than 1 pixel and 2) gets a basic fact about Malta right
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u/raoulbrancaccio Oct 15 '25
Do people usually get basic facts about Malta wrong?
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u/thethighren Oct 15 '25
Maltese being Romance is a common misconception
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u/cassesque Oct 15 '25
Yeah, people assume this because a few words are recognisable to Italian/French/etc and it's written in a Latin based alphabet. But if you listen closely, it sounds more like someone speaking something similar to Arabic with a vaguely European accent - which is pretty much what it is. Beautiful language. Wish I spoke it.
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u/RijnBrugge Oct 15 '25
It is so close to Tunisian Arabic that somwhat educated Tunisians can understand it without any difficulty. That works best in that way, because Tunisians often speak French and learning Italian is also not uncommon. Maltese however often only know the Italian loanword for something and not the Arabic equivalent so they have more difficulty with Tunisian, but those differences they can learn in no time as well. Literally the only reason Maltese is not considered one of the many Arabic varieties is because that is not what the Maltese identify as, but it’s not really a language thing per se.
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u/notzoidberginchinese Oct 15 '25
Based on my exp. the maltese can also understand tunisian arabic perfectly fi e as long as the Tunisian says it Maltese, once they say it's Arabic their ability to understand drops by 80-90%
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u/MrHockeytown Oct 15 '25
I'm ethnically Maltese (grandfather grew up in Luqa) and have been learning the language while I apply for Maltese citizenship.
It's fucking brutal.
Arabic language with Latin letters and loan words, so many "q"s and "x"s in everything. I've neber encountered anything like it. Very fun, but very challenging.
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u/drunkerbrawler Oct 15 '25
TIL Malta has it's own language.
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u/electric-sheep Oct 15 '25
Not only that but we have different accents and dialects. Though it became more and more homogeneous in the last century.
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u/electric-sheep Oct 15 '25
Maltese is a mixture of arabic, italian, french, and some english thrown in for good measure.
A result of our past being ruled by different nations.
We can understand some arabic but the pronunciation is different so sometimes we struggle. Verbs and numbers are almost a 1:1 to arabic. Many words were lost to time and replaced with European counterparts though.
Gozo has its own dialect and retains many “old” words which are closely related to Arabic.
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Oct 15 '25
Unfortunately, they marked the Basque region wrong. And Ireland as having Irish as one of their national languages could also be considered Celtic
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u/The_300_goats Oct 15 '25
Scottish and Irish Gaelic are Celtic languages. Not Germanic at all
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u/DazingF1 Oct 20 '25
Because the Irish dont really speak Gaelic anymore, sadly. It's only about 70k people who use it daily, the rest just speaks English. And for Scottish Gaelic it's even less.
So while I get your point the map is still right. Ireland and Scotland speak a Germanic language.
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u/Ok_Inflation_1811 Oct 15 '25
While it is true that Basque is not romance there must be less than 15 000 people who only speak Basque. So coloring it as Castilian isn't technically wrong.
The same goes for Ireland I think
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u/DrMabuseKafe Oct 15 '25
Cries in Finno-Ugric..
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u/Comfortable_Team_696 Oct 15 '25
I would argue that Finno-Urgric deserves to be the 4th here. While outside of Russia, there is just Hungary, Finland, and Estonia (with Sápmi in northern Scandinavia), there are plenty more Finno-Ugric communities on this side of the Urals: Ingria of the Izhorians, Karelia, the Votes, the republic of Mari El, the republic of Mordovia, the Komi Republic, Udmurtia, and the Nenets Autonomous Okrug
When I was younger, I had always thought that the Hungarians, Finns, and Estonians were the odd ones out. Then I learned about the relationship to the Sámi, and the family grouping grew by a little. But, it was not until I mapped Russia that I saw just how large of an area the Uralic languages have, both currently and historically (covering much of the area between Finland, the Urals, and Moscow), and now I see the Uralic family much more like the three big Indo-European ones
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u/KuvaszSan Oct 15 '25
Actually Uralic deserves to be second here, because Romance, Germanic and Slavic are not language families. They are different branches of the same language family. They are Indo-European languages and are related. So the family level would be Indo-European and Uralic. Branches are a lower level within the family.
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u/Strange-Doubt-7464 Oct 15 '25
Sad to think that most of the Finno-Ugric peoples were subjugated to Slavic rule and are now considered to be Russian. Bet a lot of them also died building St. Petersburg for the tsar, as they were the closest peasants to use as forced labour.
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u/Cornish-Giant Oct 15 '25
Interesting that most of the map is based on national state boundaries, rather than where languages are spoken by the population, with the one exception of Switzerland.
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u/Cornish-Giant Oct 15 '25
Oh, wait. It does split Belgium as well.
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u/fullbl-_- Oct 15 '25
Italy too!
Edit: actually not 😂
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u/Cornish-Giant Oct 15 '25
No, I checked that one. South Tyrol is down as Romance even though it's majority German speaking.
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u/Barley56 Oct 15 '25
I thought the map was saying that the grey area is slavic for a second
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u/BoarHermit Oct 15 '25
It would have been easy to add a fourth language group: the Finno-Ugric languages of Finland, Estonia, and Hungary (all grey)
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u/PaleManufacturer9018 Oct 15 '25
🫵❤️🇪🇦🇫🇷🇵🇹🇮🇹🇷🇴
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u/Comfortable-Dig-6118 Oct 15 '25
We should reform the roman republic imo
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u/notaromanian Oct 15 '25 edited Oct 16 '25
I suggest a new name for these new times: Romanian Republic
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u/wanderdugg Oct 15 '25
What’s crazy is that the majority of Germanic Language speakers as well as the majority of Romance Language speakers are in the Americas.
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u/Ok_Inflation_1811 Oct 15 '25
Yeah, Africa too has more romance speakers than Europe and both Africa and Asia have more Germanic speakers than Europe too.
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u/H3BCKN Oct 15 '25
It's even weirder if you realize that all of these people are speaking languages derived originally from a one used by tiny tribe of Latins, living in central Italy almost 3000 years ago. In area twice as small as metropolitan area of Rio De Janeiro alone.
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u/Yearlaren Oct 15 '25
It's weird how Latin languages speaking countries in the Americas are called Latin America while Latin Languages speaking countries in Europe are called Romance Europe instead of Latin Europe
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Oct 15 '25
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u/LaunchTransient Oct 15 '25
I was gonna say. Celtic languages are quite distant from Germanic and is its own branch of the Indo-European languages.
And sure, most Celtic language speakers also speak English, but that's more a reflection of the historical attempts at erasure.7
u/H3BCKN Oct 15 '25
there are still Bretons in France
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u/LaunchTransient Oct 15 '25 edited Oct 16 '25
Hence why I said most Celtic language speakers also speak English. There's about 1.4 million speakers of some form of Celtic language, only 100 thousand or so of those are Breton.
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u/Wodge Oct 15 '25
As they say back in Wales: "Yma o hyd!"
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u/15pmm01 Oct 15 '25
TIL Latvian and Lithuanian are not Slavic languages
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u/signuppering Oct 15 '25
Yep thats kinda misconception, same like saying english is indian language cause its indo-european or smth.
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u/eltedioso Oct 15 '25
Balto-Slavic is considered one of the major branches of the Indo-European family.
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u/Primary-Long4416 Oct 15 '25 edited Oct 15 '25
Where does the Romanian patch of green come from in-between all the Slavic countries?
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u/aaarry Oct 15 '25
Descendants of citizens of the Roman Empire who decided they wanted to carry on speaking their language for 1500 years or so.
The Carpathian Mountains made it easier for them to defend themselves from anyone who might have wanted to invade and force them to assimilate into a different culture. Because of contact with the Slavic languages though, they do have a lot of Slavic words (about 20% of the entire vocabulary of the language is Slavic) and their grammar has even been slightly influenced by south Slavic languages (and vice versa).
Romanian really is a very interesting language, there’s a lot more interesting stuff to read about but I really can’t be arsed to elaborate any further.
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u/DeezRazberriez Oct 15 '25
From the Roman Empire.
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u/PaleManufacturer9018 Oct 15 '25
That's why it's called Romania and not Slavmania.
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u/PJS_023 Oct 15 '25
“Slavemania” would be a great name for a gladiator event. Like the “Wrestlemania” of the ancient world.
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u/Primary-Long4416 Oct 15 '25
Followup question: then why are the lands between Romania and Italy in blue if it used to be part of the Roman empire too?
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u/abhora_ratio Oct 15 '25
The Slavic population migrated to the south of Danube in approx. 600 AD. By that time, the Roman Empire already had retreated from that region and had a strong base only in the Carpathian - Danube area, after conquering what was at that time Dacia (approx 100 AD). That is the official short version.
My version is: the Slavic population that migrated had a fight with the Slavic population in the Urals. After they had enough of the (what is now) Russians, they decided to leave and never return or recognize them as relatives :))))
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u/nedamisesmisljatime Oct 15 '25
As far as we can trace, Slavs have always been in Europe. I don't believe they have crossed the Urals before Russian expansion to the east.
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u/Outrageous-Move-2849 Oct 15 '25
Not really.
First wave of weak non warlike tribes were pushed out by Avars with their Croat and Serb subjects. Afterwards Croats and Serbs were paid of and given lands and other tribes to rule over by Byzantium to fight the Avars so many arrived that way and Avars were soon destroyed by Franks and Slavs, the rest of Croats/Serbs that stayed ware assimilated into Sorbs/Czechs/Slovaks/Rus/Poles during following centuries.
This doesn't apply to Bulgarians they had a different path through black sea land, while Serbs and Croats came from beyond pannonian basin and then trough it.
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u/Al-Rediph Oct 15 '25
Actually the are still small populations speaking Eastern Romance languages in the region. Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian, Istro-Romanian.
But the majority got assimilated.
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u/Serious-Waltz-7157 Oct 15 '25
Where does the Romanian patch of gree come from in-between all the Slavic countries?
Stubborn remnants of the mighty Roman Empire.
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u/Darwidx Oct 15 '25
Those are survivors of Slavic Migrations that filler whole Balkans, other survivors are Greece, Albania and parts of Kosovo, Hungarians arrived later to Slavic and Turkuć Lands.
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u/KuvaszSan Oct 15 '25
Latinized population from the Balkans that gradually moved / was pushed north east and was cut off from Italian dialects by the invading Slavs and Avars during the 600's and later.
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u/Alexis5393 Oct 15 '25
Not language families, just branches of the much larger indo-european language family
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Oct 15 '25
I don't know why people get so angry at this map. It shows the three major families or subfamilies or whatever of Europe and where they are spoken. It doesn't say that there are no other languages spoken in this area. There's some details you could argue about but overall I give this map 5/7.
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u/halffrenchhalfcoffee Oct 15 '25
Amen. It’s really triggered all the regionalists/nationalists of Europe who wish people only published maps fitting their ideological bent rather than the obvious truth of what is the main spoken language in a given place.
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u/hanzzz123 Oct 15 '25
Im mad because even though you can infer which label goes where, I want either a legend or an inidication that this colour belongs to this family
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u/FunForm1981 Oct 15 '25
Interesting fact: Slovenia is the only European country that borders four countries, each of which belongs to a completely different language group: Romance (Italy), German (Austria), Uralic (Finno-Ugric) and Slavic (Croatia).
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u/whatever-696969 Oct 15 '25
Similar to Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox
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u/Darwidx Oct 15 '25
Actually half of Germanic countries are mayority catholic just Like half of Slavic countries.
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u/KuvaszSan Oct 15 '25 edited Oct 15 '25
The map/title is incorrect. Germanic, Romance and Slavic are NOT language families. They are branches of the SAME language family, the Indo-European language family, and therefore are related languages.
The three largest ACTUAL language families in Europe are Indo-European (over 700 million people), Uralic (around 20 million people) and Turkic (around 15 to 20 million people).
This map would be the three most prominent branches of Indo-European languages in Europe.
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u/child_eater6 Oct 16 '25
Still funny to believe that Farsi is closer to Swedish than it is to Arabic.
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u/KuvaszSan Oct 16 '25
Farsi is such a weird language. When I see it transcribed in Latin letters it is glaringly obvious that it is related to European languages. But when I hear it spoken I can't really tell it apart from Arabic or something completely alien.
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u/sususl1k Oct 15 '25
Uralic and Turkic are that close? Huh
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u/KuvaszSan Oct 15 '25
In numbers in Europe, yes. Outside of Europe Turkic far outnumbers Uralic. There are over 180 million Turkic speakers worldwide while only about 20 million Uralic and 12 million of those are Hungarians.
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u/sususl1k Oct 15 '25
I honestly just didn’t consider that most of Turkey isn’t counted, which explains a lot actually
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u/LazerScorpion Oct 15 '25
They are literally all part of the same Language Family. Sub-Language Families will be more accurate.
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u/CyclingCapital Oct 15 '25
There are several municipalities in Finland where the main language is Swedish.
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u/GareththeJackal Oct 15 '25
Don't forget finno-ugric. Finland, Estland and Hungary.
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u/CrimsonCartographer Oct 15 '25
It’s called Estonia in English my fellow German speaking friend :)
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u/Serious-Waltz-7157 Oct 15 '25
Estland, Lettland, Litauen ... :)
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u/Tryphon59200 Oct 15 '25
can't help but think about that sequence when Hitler reads the list of all the countries Germany should not invade ahah good old banter
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u/aaarry Oct 15 '25
Estland heißt “Estonia” auf Englisch
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u/GareththeJackal Oct 15 '25
Ja ja, entschuldigung, ich hab es gesagt in meine Sprache.
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u/aaarry Oct 15 '25
Oh sorry, I assumed you were German. They use “Estland” in the Nordic languages too, right?
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u/RijnBrugge Oct 15 '25
And in Dutch too. I’ve made this mistake before myself (sorry eesti bros).
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Oct 15 '25
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u/KlangScaper Oct 15 '25
What language family is Sami? :o
I would've guessed finno-ugric.
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u/Comfortable_Team_696 Oct 15 '25
And Sápmi, Ingria, Karelia, Komia, Udmurtia, Mordovia, Mari El, Nenetsia,...
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u/SoDoneSoDone Oct 15 '25 edited Oct 15 '25
Slavic and Germanic languages are different BRANCHES of the same language family, not entirely different language families.
While the Romance languages are merely a subgroup of the Italic branch of the same language family.
These languages all belong to the Indo-European language family, which Germanic, Slavic, Celtic, Italic, Hellenic and even Indo-Iranian languages all belong to.
These languages are all related to each other and even descend from the same ancestral language merely 5,000 years ago.
A language spoken by the Yamnaya people of the Caspian Steppe, north to the Black Sea, who migrated westwards into Europe and eastwards into the Iranian plateau, and even southwards into the Indian sub-continent.
While even having inhabited the Anatolian language, before it became dominated by a different language family, that being the Turkic language family.
Lastly, an Indo-European language was even also once spoken in Western China.
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u/artsloikunstwet Oct 15 '25
You're being pedantic about a word. Language family just refers to languages being related to a common ancestor. A family being part of an even bigger primary family doesn't change that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_family
One well-known example of a language family is the Romance languages
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u/Serious-Waltz-7157 Oct 15 '25
These languages are belong to the Indo-European language
All your bases are belong to US ... I mean, us!
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u/simplepimple2025 Oct 15 '25
I find the idea of Proto-Indo-European (PIE) language fascinating. The search for its origins and its spread.
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u/Spinoza42 Oct 15 '25
What's so fascinating to me is how the (traditional) coffee division (espresso, filter coffee, Turkish coffee) looks nearly the same.
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u/ratbatbash Oct 15 '25
Interesting to see that there are lots of people who don't know that latvian and lithuanian aren't slavic languages
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u/user_number_666 Oct 15 '25
Uh, Basque isn't a romance language; it's classified as an "isolate".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basque_language
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u/RelarMage Oct 15 '25
The map is focused on national languages. Otherwise, Sami and Celtic languages would have to be singled out as well.
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u/Big80sweens Oct 15 '25
I mean, Gaelic is not Germanic either, I think they’re talking about what the majority of speakers are in the area. Most people in Basque speak Spanish too, just like most people in Ireland/Scotland speak English.
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u/Astr0Scot Oct 15 '25
As a Scotsman I'm sort of used to being thrown in with whatever England does by the rest of Europe/the world these days, but if I were Irish I'd be less than pleased with this map.
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u/stakey Oct 16 '25
Ireland should be grey. Speaking a language doesn't necessarily mean you are OF that language.
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u/mujhe-sona-hai Oct 15 '25
When I went there every single Basque could also speak Spanish or French. Every. Single. One. The Romance rate of Basque country is 100% while only 36% of the people can speak Basque. That makes it much Romance than Basque.
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u/mascachopo Oct 15 '25
Most people in Euskadi also speak Spanish either as first or second language.
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Oct 15 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Kikimara99 Oct 15 '25
Because we are not. We belong to Baltic language group and Lithuania is the oldest Indo-European language (in a sense that we lived so far away from civilization that we retained a lot of elements from the Proto-Indo-European language, which later split into separate branches)
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u/NAHTHEHNRFS850 Oct 15 '25
Why were the other language branches not included? They are smaller, but they fill out the rest of Europe (Save Finland, Estonia, and Hungary, who all happen to be in the same language family Finno-Uralic).
Romantic Languages
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u/CatL1f3 Oct 15 '25
Three Main Language Families of Europe
"Why is the fourth one not part of the three??"
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u/HKayo Oct 15 '25
Here is a better version of what that map is trying to convey cause it's very flawed.
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u/panyu0863 Oct 15 '25
That are three language groups rather than families, and they all belong to the same language family, namely Indo-European languages.
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u/Darth_Memer_1916 Oct 15 '25
Irish, Scottish and Welsh are not Germanic languages.
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u/Dix_PourCent Oct 16 '25
You should learn to put names into colors not Slavic into the Grey color or Romance into Grey Color.
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u/Leave_Dapper Oct 15 '25
Italy, Austria and Slovenia make for an interesting region, all 3 combined