Home - Index : Eus-Fra-Eng-Esp

Internal policy, terms of use, privacy policy and external links disclaimer

Principal references

Linguistic criteria and Frequently Asked Questions

Internal policy, terms of use, privacy policy and external links disclaimer

Internal Policy for linguistic maps

http://www.muturzikin.com is a website with neutral point of view. 

It's a fundamental Muturzikin.com principle which states that all maps have been drawn from a neutral point of view, they represent views fairly and without bias. This includes maps and categories.

Types of bias excluded for linguistic maps: class, commercial, ethnic or racial, gender, geographical, nationalistic, political, religious and sensationalism.

Terms of Use

For linguistic maps :

• The resources found on the Muturzikin website are intended for scholarly research and educational use. You may make a copy (Print Screen) or need a copy of portions of these documents for research or educational purposes free of charge and with permission.

• Reference with proper attribution Mutur Zikin's website on your documents with this address : http://www.muturzikin.com.

• Republication or commercial use of any original material (linguistic maps) in this website is expressly prohibited.

• You may make links to pages on this website (with proper attribution), but you may not mirror (i.e., place copies of). To transclude (It is a feature of substitution templates) these maps, in part or whole, on your website you need a Mutur Zikin’s authorization.

Permission Form

No futher permission for the rest : GIF,services...You are free to download everything you want.

Privacy Policy

Muturzikin does not send unsolicited or "spam" e-mail and does not sell, rent, or trade its e-mail lists to third parties.

If you supply us with your email address, you will receive the information for which you provided us your address. If you have any questions or concerns regarding our privacy policy, please e-mail .

External Links Disclaimer

Some links in on Muturzikin .com's Web site point to documents and sites which are not located within the Muturzikin .com internet domain and, therefore, are not managed or controlled by Muturzikin .com. These links are included to point the reader to other possibly relevant resources.

A link to a document or site other than those included within the Muturzikin.com domain does not necessarily imply that Muturzikin.

• endorses the organization(s) or person(s) providing them,

• agrees with the ideas expressed, or

• attests to the correctness, factuality, appropriateness, or legality of the contents.

Mutur Zikin is always interested to know what you do with my linguistic maps.

Principal references

Sites with Neutral Point of View (NPOV)

Wikipedia is a free, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its name is a portmanteau of the words wiki (a technology for creating collaborative websites) and encyclopedia. Wikipedia’s 10 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world, and almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone who can access the Wikipedia website. Launched in 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, it is currently the largest and most popular general reference work on the Internet.

Wikimedia Commons is a repository of free content images, sound and other multimedia files. It is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation, from which uploaded files can be used across all Wikimedia projects in all languages, including Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikisource and Wikinews, or downloaded for offsite use, as all of the content is either in the public domain or released under free licenses such as the GNU Free Documentation License. As of July 2008, the repository contained over 3 million media files.

The World Atlas of Language Structures Online is a joint project of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and the Max Planck Digital Library . WALS is a large database of structural (phonological, grammatical, lexical) properties of languages gathered from descriptive materials (such as reference grammars) by a team of more than 40 authors (many of them the leading authorities on the subject).

Websites with religious bias

SIL International Founded over 70 years ago, SIL International is a faith-based organization that studies, documents, and assists in developing the world’s lesser-known languages. SIL’s staff shares a Christian commitment to service, academic excellence, and professional engagement through literacy, linguistics, translation, and other academic disciplines. SIL makes its services available to all without regard to religious belief, political ideology, gender, race, or ethnic background. SIL (initially known as the Summer Institute of Linguistics) has grown from a small summer linguistics training program with two students in 1934 to a staff of over 5,000 coming from over 60 countries. SIL’s linguistic investigation exceeds 1,800 languages spoken by over 1.2 billion people in more than 70 countries

Ethnologue.com is a place where you can conveniently find many resources to help you with your research of the world’s languages. Ethnologue.com is owned by SIL International, a service organization that works with people who speak the world’s lesser-known languages.

Global Mapping International is a non-profit organization dedicated to furthering the cause of world evangelization through applied mission research, mapping and publishing. Click on any of the links below to learn more.

Joshua Project is a research initiative seeking to highlight the ethnic people groups of the world with the least followers of Christ. The mission of Joshua Project is to help bring definition to the unfinished task of the Great Commission by identifying and highlighting the people groups of the world that have the least exposure to the Gospel and the least Christian presence in their midst.

In collaboration with religious websites

Proel: Promotora Española de Lingüística (Proel) es una organización registrada en el Ministerio del Interior, que colabora con varias entidades, especialmente con la organización internacional SIL (SUMMER INSTITUTE OF LINGUISTICS, en castellano ILV--INSTITUTO LINGÜÍSTICO DE VERANO), para impulsar el desarrollo lingüístico de las lenguas minoritarias, tanto en España como en el mundo. Proel también divulga en España las oportunidades de servicio internacional que ofrece el SIL.

Geocortex.net is the web-based GIS division of Latitude Geographics, a software company that specializes in helping customers and business partners enjoy rapid success with web-based Geographic Information System (GIS) technology developed by Environmental Research Systems Institute (ESRI is the world leader in GIS).

Organizations or institutions

UNESCO: the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. For this specialized United Nations agency, it is not enough to build classrooms in devastated countries or to publish scientific breakthroughs. Education, Social and Natural Science, Culture and Communication are the means to a far more ambitious goal : to build peace in the minds of men.

Perry-Castañeda Library (Map Collection) The collections of the University of Texas Libraries are the result of more than one hundred years of continuing commitment by librarians, faculty, students, and private donors to build one of the great library collections of the world.

Bibliography

A Guide to the World's Languages: Volume I, Classification by Merritt Ruhlen. Publisher: Stanford University Press; 1 edition (Aug 1 1991) ISBN-10: 0804718946

Atlas des peuples du monde de Atlas Narodov Mira, published by Russian Academy of Sciences (Росси́йская акаде́мия нау́к) de Moscou, 1964 (Bruk, S. I. and V. S. Apenchenko, eds. Glavnoe upravlenie geodezii i kartografii gosudarstvennogo geologicheskogo komiteta SSSR and Institut etnografii im. H. H. Miklukho-Maklaia, Akademiia nauk SSSR.) 184 pages dont 112 en cartes polychromes. Certaines cartes ont plus de 100 symboles et jusqu'à 200 même (Les peuples de l'Afrique, pp. 74-75) ; d'autres illustrent des répartitions jusqu'aux 5 kilomètres près (Les peuples du Caucase, pp. 18-19).

Les langues du monde by A. Meillet, M. Cohen (1924). Publisher: Slatkine Reprints, december 1997, ISBN 2051002541

Ethnologue: Languages of the World, 15th Edition, edited by Raymond G. Gordon, Jr., 2005, 1272 pp., ISBN 978-1-55671-159-6

The Atlas of Languages: The Origin and Development of Languages Throughout the World by Stephen Matthews, Maria Polinsky, Bernard Comrie. Publisher: Facts on File (December 1996). ISBN-10: 0816033889

And at least 100 people who have already contacted me and made me change some details. Thanks to all of you.

Linguistic criteria and Frequently Asked Questions

Muturzikin.com receives a certain amount of Emails and gives answers to Frequently Asked Questions.

1 : What are the linguistic criteria you apply for the content of your site ?

2 : What are your aims ?

3 : Why your linguistic maps are not accurate ?

4 : Why do you sometimes seem to overlook the principal language ?

5 : The colors should show the language which is spoken by the majority in a region but they don't. You also assume all members of a particular ethnic group always speak that group's language which is not necessarily the case.

6 : Why Sango which is the primary language spoken in the Central African Republic is not displayed on your maps ?

7 : Is it possible for me to purchase a copy of your language map ?

8 : Is there any way to past the maps directly into PowerPoint files for example, they seem to be impossible to copy to a local file ?

9 : Why do you make a geolinguistic atlas with all titles in Basque language instead of English ?

10: I am interested in including your maps on Flickr, could I reproduce them ?

11: How do I copy a linguistic map for personal use ?

12: I am interested in including your maps on my blog, my Facebook or my website. Can I reproduce them ?

13: Do you have a single linguistic map of the world as a whole or of each of the continents ?

1 : What are the linguistic criteria you apply for the content of your site?

I aim to employ a range of criteria but the main ones are as follows:

-1- Areas with longstanding significant minorities, endangered native languages or chief dialects, pidgin and creole languages.

-2- Major dialects over vernacular languages and lingua francas.

-3- Major dialects, pidgin and creole languages over lingua francas and official languages.

-4- And finally to a village or a city where most of the people speak a distinct language.
Example: Alemán Coloniero, spoken in the city of Colonia Tovar, Venezuela, is a dialect that belongs to the Low Alemannic branch of German (See here).

We don't include on our maps
- Communities.
Example: The Hutterites, like the Amish and Mennonites, speaking Hutterite German (Hutterisch) which is an Upper German dialect of the Austro-Bavarian variety of the German language (See here).

- An large ethnic district within a particular city.
Example: A chinatown.

- Moribund or scattered linguistic communities.
Example: Basques-Argentines representing 3.6 million of the total population in Argentina speak Spanish language, few speak Basque language. Welsh-Argentines settlers in Argentina speak Spanish and about eight percent also speak Welsh and they are scattered through the country.

- Diverse immigrant or heritage-language speakers.
Example: Let’s take for example the city of Calgary where I used to live. French language is spoken by 30 000 French Canadians and other francophones, Chinese language is spoken by 100 000 people, Vietnamese.... etc. If these linguistic groups are scattered through the city or are located in a specific neighborhood, it’s impossible for me to collect information about hundreds of languages from thousands cities.

2 : What are your aims ?

My maps display the ethnic and linguistic complexities in some parts of the world that are too often ignored or discarded by nationalists. Most people are conditioned to think nationalistically without even necessarily being aware of it. Each language or isogloss transcends geographical borders, where appropriate. I am committed to a different, more enlightening approach to cartography. When I see maps like this, I become convinced that we don't respect indigenous languages or acknowledge the uniqueness of each indigenous community. I seek to preserve the integrity of the area in which the language or dialect is spoken, even where this crosses international borders.

3 : Why your linguistic maps are not accurate ?

« Linguistic maps always contain inaccuracies - after all, languages are living organisms » - This is a very ambitious project and some mistakes are expected like mislabeling, but please feel free to contact me and we will work on what you have to say. I am sure I must have made minor mistakes in this solitary, monk-like task of mine so do let me know. However, please don't forget our linguistic criteria and as with all other means of imparting information, linguistic cartography depends on good quality data.

4 : Why do you sometimes seem to overlook the principal language ?

Languages are carriers of value systems and vehicles of cultural expression and they are a decisive factor in both group and individual identity... Over 50% of the world’s 6000 languages are endangered. 96% of the world’s 6000 languages are spoken by 4% of the world’s population. 90% of the world’s languages are not represented on the Internet, one language disappears on average every two weeks and 80% of the African languages have no orthography. (From UNESCO)

Reality is much more complex than it appears at first sight. These are not the kind of maps you are used to seeing simply because there are not that many of them on the Internet. The usual language map only shows official or most spoken languages and these end on the map where the border ends. These kinds of maps are commonplace (See here or here ) but I am trying to do something different. As well defined above, I am showing minority languages because I think that is also a rational choice based on legitim linguistic criteria.

5 : The colors should show the language which is spoken by the majority in a region but they don't. You also assume all members of a particular ethnic group always speak that group's language which is not necessarily the case.

You are right, these maps aren't concerned with the majority but with the rights of minority languages to gain attention. They are not your reality but another, parallel reality that you might prefer to ignore or discount. I am sorry but I do care, even if there are only 10 speakers left. Some maps show a linguistic reality that you might not have been taught in school

6 : Why Sango which is the primary language spoken in the Central African Republic is not displayed on your maps?

Native languages or chief dialects have priority on vernacular languages, lingua franca, pidgin and creole languages. Sango (also spelled Sangho) is a vehicular language, belonging to the Ngbandi language cluster (including Ngbandi and Yakoma), with many French words. Some linguists, following William J. Samarin, classify it as a Ngbandi-based creole; nethertheless Muturzikin.com have geolinguistic representations of pidgins and creoles.

7 : Is it possible for me to purchase a copy of your language map ?

I am afraid I don't make copies of my linguistic maps because there is such little demand (about a dozen requests a year) that it is just not worth it. Here is what I suggest you do instead: First, fill out fully this Permission form specifying your purpose in accordance with the terms of use. Then, I will give you access to a PNG format or any other one of your preference (JPG, PDF. GIF, BMP) without Muturzikin.com in the background. Portable Network Graphics (PNG) is a bitmapped image format that employs lossless data compression. Other popular graphics programs which support the PNG format include Adobe Photoshop, Corel Photo-Paint, Corel Paint Shop Pro, The GIMP, GraphicConverter, Helicon Filter, Inkscape, Pixel image editor, Paint.NET and Xara. Some programs bundled with popular operating systems, which support PNG include Microsoft's Paint and Apple's iPhoto and Preview. You can then print it off on whatever size or kind of paper you wish at whatever printing facilities you use (print shop or printer) but please let me know which format you will be using.