First things first, here is the map:

http://WarLight.net/SinglePlayer.aspx?PreviewMap=13130

Short version:

Of course, first thing you'll notice is that it doesn't shows the entire world !

===> 1st question to you: Should I (a) Add America (which I would draw way smaller and somewhere around Iceland) OR (b) Simply rename the map (Languages of the old world or similar).

I also havn't assigned bonus values
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Long&boring version:

Perhaps I should first explain how I made the map. I took this [table](http://www.ethnologue.com/ethno_docs/distribution.asp?by=size) from ethnologue and ranked the languages from small to big. The smallest ones have 3 million speakers. Then I started looking up the territories for each languages. Sometimes it was pretty simple because ethnologue had a decent map, but sometimes they didn't and I had to look up more information.

The result was a first map that had huge gaps. But even more important, there were **only a few languages on the entire American continent** (excluding English, French, Spanish, Portuguese and perhaps Dutch). Since a few other territories were very small and since it would be very weird (try to picture it: half of the map would be "useless" or wasted) playing on only a half map, I decided to get rid of it for now.

===> 1st question to you: Should I (a) Add America (which I would draw way smaller and somewhere around Iceland) OR (b) Simply rename the map (Languages of the old world or similar).

But America wasn't the only black part on the map. A recognisable example (to me): Estonia and Latvia. So I started to expand territories and fill in the black holes. I tried to stick to languages families as much as my own knowledge allowed me to, but of course the map is not correct. One of the most striking examples is *Dholuo*. In reality it is spoken in a small border around Lake Victoria, but it became a substitute for all Nilo-Saharian languages in the area. Here and there, i added inpopulated areas because they are inpopulated(sahara, kalahari) or because there is no single language big enough in a larger area (rainforests). Rub al khali and siberia are pure decorative and takla makan desert/Kunlun shan mts were added so that mandarin didn't grew to big. I also deleted a few territories (mainly gipsy languages) and added a few others (like Swahili, which hasn't got much mothertongue speakers but is a lingua franca over a larger area without any big language)

The opposite problem occured as well: too much territories (==> See Urdu)

The result of all my adaptations is that my map is no longer 100% accurate, but that it is better looking and more playable than before. There are however some issues:


2nd question: Russia is too huge, what should I do with it?
3rd question: Hindi " " big " " " " " "

It seems I hit the post button too early

3rd question: What about Hindi?
4th question: do you like what I did in the Phillipines to indicate that several isles belong to one territory? or is it unclear?
5th question: Tatar forms a territory within Russian but they belong to a different bonus. This means that about 1/2 you open the map, the border is green and the other half it's red. Should I change this or don't you bother?

I hope you like the idea of my map and if you have **any** tips or hints (or spot a mistake on my map), please tell me.

Is there any real point in the 2 Chineese bonuses??? You get an extra 4 income for getting 1 extra territory..
Or maybe it's just there because there are too many territories for only 4 income? If this *is* the case, why not just make one chineese bonus only with a bigger income??

A very nice map!

There are abit too many territories in each bonus for my liking, but that's just a personal preference. I'd split several of the larger bonuses in half or more.

I'd leave out America, or put it on the Eastern side of the map and perhaps just add pre-colonial language borders. I'd prefer it to be left out entirely though.

I also am not sure I like what you did with Urdu, as it makes the border between India and Pakistan difficult to visualize for defence purposes.

Regarding Russia, you could use historical borders, before Russian became quite so dominant.

Overall I think it's a great map though, and i'd definately use it!

|> Is there any real point in the 2 Chineese bonuses??? You get an extra 4 income for getting 1 extra territory..

That 4 additional armies is still under consideration:

|> I also havn't assigned bonus values

Getting one additional army for controlling an extra territory (which is a plausible outcome of assigning bonus values) isn't so bad, is it?

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|> One of the most striking examples is Dholuo. In reality it is spoken in a small border around Lake Victoria, but it became a substitute for all Nilo-Saharian languages in the area.

Then why not rename it "Nilo-Saharian"? Also, are you sure you want to connect the territories around Lake Victoria to the opposite side? Wouldn't it be better to leave those connections out?

Maybe it would be less confusing if the connection line between Igbo and Kongo didn't cross to the rainforest but is just a yellow line around it? My first instinct was "why did he cut the rainforest in two parts?".

Could you use a slightly darker colour for the Western Niger-Congo territories? Currently it's very difficult to see the borders against the background.

You don't have a connection between Sardinia (part of the Italian territory) and Sicily. I think many players simply "expect" this connection to exist. If you have no strong feelings against it, you might want to consider including it.

How on Earth are Croatian and Serbian separate territories? That's just two different names for the same language (Serbo-Croatian). (ps. Please don't tell any Serbians or Croatians I said that.) If you want another territory in that neighbourhood, there's approximately 2.5 million people who speak Slovene.

To me it looks a little ridiculous to abbreviate the (admittedly very long) "Indo-Aryan languages, East" to the barely shorter "Indo-Aryan languages E". For consistency with the "Central" bonus, I'd just write out the cardinal directions as well.

I guess there's fewer than three million Estonian speakers? It looks very weird to have "Finnish" include Estonia. Of course, including Estonia with "Lithuanian" would be even more wrong. And if Estonia gets to be a territory, it would only make sense to split "Lithuanian" into "Lithuanian" and "Latvian"... In short: I don't have a solution, but there is a "problem" there.

Given how you have distinct territories in a lot of places for very closely related languages, don't you think it'd make sense to have a "British English" (or "Real English" :p ) and an "Australian English" territory? I admit that would break the cross-map connection though, which makes this map interesting. Ah well, just a thought.

That "photo" of a dune in Western Africa looks awesome! :)

ps. Difficult to say for sure, but I think the two Albanian territories and Greek are not part of any regular bonus (only the Indo-European superbonus).

1. You should use the native languages. [Here](http://www.cogsci.indiana.edu/farg/rehling/nativeAm/continent.gif)'s a map of North America, or if you want more detail you could use [this](http://www.cogsci.indiana.edu/farg/rehling/nativeAm/namap.gif) map. I bet there are similar maps for South America, with perhaps the Amazon area unusable.
2. I highly doubt that Russians speak exactly the same Russian in Moscow as in Vladivostok. You should look for dialects in a large country like that. You could do the same with Mandarin, if possible.
3. I don't see what's wrong with Hindi. There isn't a single territory or bonus on that map named Hindi.
4. Clear enough.
5. You should use the basic adjacent line system, as in regular inter-bonus borders, I can't see why you didn't do that here.

Sorry for the double post, but I had to say this:
With the territory Afrikaans belonging to the Germanic Languages Bonus, that makes completing it nearly impossible. I know it's correct, but either connecting it to Dutch or removing it from the Germanic bonus seems the only possibility to make it work.

love the map idea and can't wait to play it i offer my assistance for testing

Since the U.S. doesn't really have an official language, maybe different accents could be added e.g. Southern. You could also add the top languages spoken by region.

theres no southamerica and northamerica -_-

Honestly, I could see it going either way; that is you could add the Americas if you want, or you could leave it as is. But either way, I like the concept. Now to answer some of your other questions:

2.) Just split it up. Call it "west Russian," "central Russian," etc. Another thing you could do, is do some research on the various regions of Russia, and try looking for some major native languages spoken there.

3.) Hindi is fine in my opinion, but you could just split it into north and south if its size bugs you.

4.) It's slightly confusing from a distance, but yes I like it.

5.) It shouldn't really matter, I doubt many people will even notice.

Hope this helps you :)

Yeah split the Americas up by the various English & Spanish dialects, throw in some Ceczua and Nahuatl and Cherokee and other fairly widely spoken native American/Pidgin languages and it should be fine.. Give it some thousands of years and the American English dialects will be full fledged languages in their own right anyways, unless the dramatically increased social interconnectivity we have today leads to convergence, which I guess might happen!

I have to say that this is perhaps the most innovative map I have seen. Awesome idea and I have already learned some things I did not know. I have no idea about the playability, but I love love love love the idea. Love it. My two cents is to just change the name of this map and make a second map of the Americas with native languages instead of the European languages.

Also you can break up Bangladesh's dialect up even more, the whole region speaks bengali but in different dialects.

[Wiki](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengali_dialects)

First, I like the idea and find the map very pretty. But.

I think here is a serious conflict between two opposite viewpoint: grammatical correctness vs. warlight playability. If the first point become more accurate, the second lose its value, and if you want to make it more playable, then you have to hurt the accuracy. So what do you want exactly? A correct language map, either a balanced warlight map, or something between these?

I could say many grammatical tips, but it would make worst the gameplay, and I think that is the stronger point of view in here. Maybe you can make a more detailed language map just for edification and an other one, a little bit less correct one for playing.

In fact the two viewpoint cant be perfect at once. Or the third way if you try to achieve a harmonic mean between the two way, if you want this I can only say good luck to you :)

To everyone:

1) My feeling tells me to leave this map as it is and make a second one later on.
2) Russia clearly needs to be split up. i'll look at it later. Another option would be to expand Siberia to the south, cutting russia of from mongolian and everything east of it. Downside: japan and korea get totally isolated. Splitting upwould be better
3) unclear what to do with hindi
4) ok
5) For playability it's better to make it a double border => to do list

A new one:

6th Q: What do you think about Urdu?

Changes i'll certainly make: Italy-Sicilia, Italy-Tunisia, Dutch-Afrikaans, think abour colours, assign bonuses

Something I'll perhaps do: madagascar-indonesia (don't know how i'll do this exactly)

Any comments, mistakes, ideas ... are welcome
thanks for answering

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@ **Blue Galaxy**: As said, I still have to assign bonus values. Probably *SinoTibet...* will have bonus value 0 or 1.

@ **Francisco ville**:
* I already split up bantu and indo-aryan. Now every decent bonus has 7-15 territories in it (and there are a few smaller ones). Of course the idea of the map isn't to conquer the entire indo-european bonus.
*i prefer leaving it out as well
*urdu might be a problem indeed. one possible solution (i don't really like) is the following: create some space between pakistan and the other territories so i can add a colored line in between.
*I'll think about Russia
*thanks

@ **RvW**
*You seem to be able to read my mind
*about dholuo: because i've done such a things all over the map & because there is 1 other nilo-saharian language on the map.
*about lake victoria: i'll consider it
*about igbo-kongo: that was my imagination gone wild. If it's clearer to go around, i'll just go around
*about colors: it's on my to do list
*about sicliy: I see i forget to do sardinia-tunsia as well => to do list
*about serbocroatian: Ethnologue lists them as 2 separate languages. Then again, Flemish and Dutch appear to be 2 different languages as well. I'v decided to stick to my source for these matters
*about the long name: to do list (i was a little tired yesterday evening)
*about baltica: the problem is there indeed. the biggest problem to me is that i know europe is wrong but i have no idea how the rest of the world is. If i knew the entire world, i could solve all "problems". Perhaps for this one very clear example i could rename it *Finnish and Estonian*?
*about australia: I'd like to keep it as it is. Perhaps I'll also add Dutch-Afrikaans. This will give the map a unique cross-map connection system thing.
*i like them as well
*they indeed are only part of the indo-europ. bonus, just as lithuania and armenia.
Thanks for watching the map in detail!


@ **Moros**
* A map "languages fo the americas" could be another project. I think i'll just rename it.
*i'll think about russia
*Hindi is in central india (and it's quite big) look again.
*ok
*i didn't do it because the result is ugly.
*Afrikaans-dutch is coming up

@ **ironheart**: thanks

@ **world dominator**:
*English seems pretty much a national languages. i think i'll leave america out
*probably, but which langauge doesn't have dialects? Ethnologue lists it as a single language while splitting up others. I'll stick to my source. But if you have a very good argument, please tell me.

@ **atomik duke**: indeed. Only 6 (important) languages spoken there + a few european ones. problems: (a) unnecessary extra complexity in mainland Europe (example: english-spanish connection) (b) Half of the map is "wasted" you'd 'constantly' be playing on the right half, but each turn you'd have to check the left half to see if your coastal areas aren't under attack (c) This way the rest of the world could be enlarged, allowing me to add some really small territories (Bali for example)

@ **pkthunda**:
*i'll think abour russia
*I wouldn't split it up, but i would delete the northern part (beteen awadhi and kanauji) and expand the adjacent languages to fill in the hole.
*ok
*just what i thougt - but i know the map and i know that tatar isn't slavic. If you happen to have "the wrong map", it's not clear. So perhaps i'll change it anyway

@ **devilnis** : i can't afford to look 1000 years forward. I think i'll just rename it.

@ **Dr type...** : thank you! however don't try to learn to much from this map, because it's not entirely correct.

@ **Urfang** : The aim of the map was to make a playable map that is relative correct (= without huge errors). If you think you spotted a huge or a big mistake, please tell me.

Could you please tell me what's exactly wrong with Hindi and Urdu?
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you don't have to shout it out that loud!

Hindi: nothing really, except for being big in a region where other territories are small. This means that "oriya" is closer to "eastern panjabi" than "dhundari" is to "eastern panjabi"

Urdu: Connections might not seem clear (especially while you're playing)

hope it helps

sry for double post. oriya:SE of hindi, panjabi: NE of hindi, dhundari:right in the middle of that cluster in the central indo-aryan bonus (relativly big)