Map of Europe divided by culture and language

Discussion in 'Western Europe' started by Robert van Olsen, Jan 6, 2013.

  1. Robert van Olsen

    Robert van Olsen New Member

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    This is not something too serious, so I choose to post it here in the "haha"-thread.
    <<< MODERATOR EDIT: MOVED TO WESTERN EUROPE >>>

    But my intent was to create a new world map of Europa, dividing countries by language and culture spanning from 1800 until today. Some countries were harder than others. For example Finland, Romania and France. But anyhow, this is a map of Europe, of how I would have divided it's countries by language and culture.

    [​IMG]

    And this is how the map actually looks.

    [​IMG]

    Any opinions on this?
     

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  2. cenydd

    cenydd Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    The map is far too simplistic, if you are attempting to define countries by their 'language and culture'. For a start, you'd have to split what you have as the UK into several different parts. And that's just the start!
     
  3. ryanm34

    ryanm34 New Member

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    <<<Mod Edit: Profanity Removed>>> no

    We fought a two wars to get out of the UK what makes you think we have any interest in rejoining.
     
  4. mutmekep

    mutmekep New Member

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    Albanians are not Slavic
    Romanians are not Slavic
    Baltic nations are not Slavic
    Poland is not Germanic
    Greeks are not Latin
    Fins are Baltic people not Germanic
    Basques are just Basques
    Belarussians are Russians and so are most of the Ukrainians
    Moldavians are Romanians
    Slovenians are Slavs of Germanic culture, good luck with them
    Walloons are French by all means
    Brittany is closer to Ireland/ Highland Scotland than to France
    Czechoslovakia is central European Slavic
    Hungary is just Hungary
     
  5. cenydd

    cenydd Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    And closer to Wales then to either of them!
     
  6. Iolo

    Iolo Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Quite so - and that's true for France and Spain and Italy, so forget your 'New Roman Empire'. Since we were the last survivors of the old (western) one we should certainly be in that, though, if it is socialist.
     
  7. Iolo

    Iolo Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Drugs?
     
  8. cenydd

    cenydd Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I'm not sure that the Spanish and Portuguese will be entirely happy living with Italian and French as their official languages, either!
     
  9. ryanm34

    ryanm34 New Member

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    Actually the NHS would probably be the best argument for rejoining the union.
     
  10. Vlad Ivx

    Vlad Ivx Active Member Past Donor

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    Haha maybe you want record views from the very start by stirring up inner parts in every single member here through ''misidentification''?
     
  11. Vlad Ivx

    Vlad Ivx Active Member Past Donor

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    So what was it that was hard about Romania? Romania is indeed surrounded by Slavic nations but out of all why would it put itself in a Slavic category? Why when we are actually Latin and we understand tons of words from across the continent? ...words in Portuguese especially and Italian, Spanish? We chat with these people without prior study of the languages and in France and Belgium too the phonetic similarity allows us to pass as locals as long as our grammar is ok. On the other hand, why, when here, in Central/Eastern Europe we don't get one word from across our own border, for example in Bulgarian, Serbian or Ukrainian? They sound extraterrestrial to us really...

    I am for political unions with very different cultures but what I don't like is misidentification of ethnic identity, be they deliberate of accidental.
     
  12. KGB agent

    KGB agent Well-Known Member

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    They are Finno-Ugric.
    No.

    Czechoslovakia doesn't exist.
    Hungary is Ugric.
     
  13. The13thMonkey

    The13thMonkey New Member

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    Romanians are actually mainly Slavic but they speak a Romance language (I am talking about the genetic pool, not the language and customs), Albanians are generally not perceived as being Slavs (although today you could pretty much erase than line on the map seeing that many people, for instance from the UK live in Spain most of the year, or that many Turks live in Germany) and if you really insist on that map I cannot help but feel that we would probably see other borders reemerging as time went by.
    The way I see it is that borders as they are today are mostly arbitrary and you cannot draw a line on a map and say that this is Germanic Empire, and that is New Roman Empire. There are people living on both sides who would declare themselves differently. For example, I would really have a hard time of placing Switzerland anywhere :)
     
  14. The13thMonkey

    The13thMonkey New Member

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    Although, if you ask me I've often dreamt of moving to New Zealand :D
     
  15. mutmekep

    mutmekep New Member

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    And what did i posted? Most people here are not Europeans , would you like to start speaking about Karelians and Sami as well ?

    Absolutely yes , OP almost created the Jagellon empire where Belarus was part of Poland-Lithuania but so were eastern parts of Russia like Kursk . Are you some kind of racist that considers Ukrainians pigs ?


    Czech Republic and Slovania, same thing

    They share some distant relation with Fins and Turks but you really wanna group artistic Magyars with antisocial Fins?

    Albanians and Romanians are of the same Thraco-Illyrian stock as Greeks , both Wallachia and Moldavia had to fight the Slavic papist scum several times . Ah and by the way Greek war of independence started in Iasi :p

    This is correct most countries are mixed and usually the culture jumps languages , we are not connected by race or language with Bulgarians but in Sofia or in Athens , food is the same, customs are the same, people are the same.
     
  16. KGB agent

    KGB agent Well-Known Member

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    You posted that they are "Baltic" but they are not. "Baltic" is a branch of "Slavic",which broke away long ago.
    Absolutely no,states borders have nothing in common with culture or genetic roots. They are our relatives if i can say so, but they are not the same. Dutch and Austrians are similar to the Germans, but they are not the same. Oranges are similar to the grapefruits, but they are not the same. Just saying.

    Well, they are already grouped together in the EU anyway.
     
  17. mutmekep

    mutmekep New Member

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    Language is not of any importance but if you want to go this way Balto-Slavic is a direct branch of IE like say Latin and Armenian ...
    I doubt that there is anything Slavic in Lithuanians or Latvians .

    Dutch and Austrians don't speak the same language, don't have the same names , don't share the same history and don't bare the same culture Belarusians and Russians do , i have personally met hundreds of them working or vacationing and there isn't a single difference .


    LOL sure a consortium of banks "groups" us
     
  18. KGB agent

    KGB agent Well-Known Member

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    The opposite. Language is very important. Because language is the main component of culture and thus self-identification. Degrees of languages' relationship is another question. Anyway my point was "Finns are not Baltic", not the "Baltic are Slavic".

    Germans and Austrians DO speak the same language. And they have a lot of common history. But they are not the same. Belarusians have their own language. But it is not used very often over there. Russian is in domain. And we were living in one country for the last 250 years and back in 9-11 century. So yes, very similar, still not the same. If we are the same, nobody would identify themselves as Belarusians in the census.


    These banks are quite efficient in grouping you, with these numerous united constitution and legislation attempts.
     
  19. cenydd

    cenydd Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    There is a very important point here, relevant to the UK situation. The majority language in the UK is English, but the Welsh, for example have their own language, which forms part of their national identity. that language is a minority language in Wales (spoken by about 1/5th of the population), but the main reason it is no longer the main language of Wales is the centuries of official pressure (now thankfully ended, pretty much) on the people of Wales to assimilate to the language and culture of the larger invading country and abandon their own. The language was very heavily damaged and is no longer the common tongue of all of the people of Wales, but the majority of the people of Wales still consider themselves to be 'Welsh' anyway (either 'Welsh' alone, or 'Welsh' and 'British'), even if they don't speak it. Wales and England have distinctive histories and cultures of their own, separate from one another. In the modern world, they also have some common cultural elements, of course, but that certainly doesn't make those nations 'the same' at all. and then there's Scotland and Northern Ireland, which have entirely separate circumstances of their own.

    In France, on the other hand, even though for a long time it had its other languages, the process of forging one 'nation' out of all of the peoples of the 'state' was much more complete (but not 100% complete even then).

    Language is, or can be, very important in determining 'nationality', but 'nationality' is about more than just language alone - it is about the whole picture of cultural identity, which may or may not include languages, past and present.

    'Ethnicity' is an entirely different thing again, of course - many of the English, for example, would actually have been ethnic Britons (i.e. 'Welsh' or 'Romano-British') who lived in the part now called 'England' and eventually adopted the language and culture that developed after the Anglo-Saxon 'invasion'. On top of that, half of England is in effect a former Viking 'state', as are large parts of Scotland, part of which were also populated by Brythonic and Goidelic Celts, and in Wales as well as the Brythonic Celtic 'ethnic stock' there is plenty of Viking, Anglo-Saxon, Goidelic Celt and even Flemish ethnic stock - the whole place is a melting pot, and has been for thousands of years. Much of Western Europe, especially around the coasts, will not be that much different - thousands of years of groups settling and re-settling (and/or conquering, obviously), changing local culture, adapting to local culture, and so on, with 'nations' and 'peoples' forged accordingly over a long period. How do you define the 'ethnicity' in terms of 'nationality'? You can't.

    The map of Europe and its 'nations', 'cultures', 'linguistic' and 'ethnic' groups is actually far, far more complicated than the current political map of Europe would make it appear - trying to simplify that even further into great 'groups' of somehow 'similar' people by 'language and culture' (or anything else!) is a complete waste of time. It simply cannot be done in a way which reflects reality at all.
     
  20. mutmekep

    mutmekep New Member

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    Tell that to my Albanian speaking Greek parents :)


    edit: The Dutch = from the Netherlands , they speak Flemish or something else definitely not German
     
  21. cenydd

    cenydd Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Germanic_languages
    So if you were to be defining Europe by linguistic 'groups', the Dutch, Germans and English would be together in one group, and separate from the Scandinavians (who's languages are defined as being 'North Germanic').

    In that context then, where do the Welsh go? The most popularly spoken language today in Wales is English, but it wouldn't have been in 1800 (as mentioned in the OP). Do you have another, separate 'region' to cover all of the 'Celts' (even thought their languages are in 2 distinctly different groups, they do all originate from one 'Proto-Celtic' language, which forms is an entirely separate branch of the Indo-European family of languages)? Or one to cover just Wales, Brittany and Cornwall (even though Cornish as a language has been extinct for a couple of centuries)? What about Scotland - is it defined according to the modern predominant use of English, or by Gaelic, or by Scots?

    This kind of problem is likely to exist all over the place - that's why the idea doesn't work.
     
  22. mutmekep

    mutmekep New Member

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    For sure languages are not the best tool to separate cultural lines and i posted that earlier , linguistic and probably cultural links that go 1000 years back are not always trustworthy so i guess it all boils down to how people identify themselves.


    Optional

    If you are familiar with the Balkan wars over Macedonia they clearly demonstrate that nothing should be taken as given : Macedonia had Turks, Greeks, Bulgarians, Albanians and mixed , also it had muslims and christians and jews and those religions were not nation specific (neither were the languages) now add nationalists , communists and anarchists in the mix .... it took wars between countries and civil ones, several population exchanges with people ending up as far as Tajikistan , the area split in three parts that are even today largely disputed , the creation of a fake "Macedonian" nation and a lovely "everyone hates everyone" situation :) the best part of it is that all those people were of a single culture !
     
  23. cenydd

    cenydd Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Yes, absolutely! That doesn't always make things nice and clear and simple, of course, but that's life!
     
  24. Albert Di Salvo

    Albert Di Salvo New Member

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    Ethno-nationalism is the most powerful force in the world today. Even people of mixed backgrounds are getting worked up. Look at Bosnia as an example.
     
  25. Viv

    Viv Banned by Request

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    Capital city London my arse.

    IT'S EUROPE...everybody is different from everybody. That's the way uhuhuhuh we like it.

    And in Scotland we are bilingual. Go figure.
     

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