Map of Europe divided by culture and language

Nice, so you are impossing in Portugal and Spain the Italian and French languages. Yeah. Do you think that people would accept it? Spain has problems of people demanding independence with the Catalan and the Basque recognizes, imagine that these languages are not official anymore and neither Spanish neither Portuguese, this only for Iberian Peninsule.

Another region, you are forcing Russian in Slavic countries that people speak other languages like Bulgarian, Polish, Ukranian and the people of that territories are not really friendly with the Russian, and less if you try to force on them the Russian language, they will rebel against it.

With the Germany region you "invade" Poland, forcing them to speak German, against you will have a big rejection, and worse also you "invade" the Scandinavian countries with their own particulaties.

No, and no. Never. And also is better small independent "countries" than big centralist countries as you would like.

 

I tell you that they won't. Many Spanish are not really happy of how they have been treated by Spain, I am refering to the Catalan Speaking regions or Basque, for example. Imagine if you force on them other languages that even they don't know and they don't have any real contact

 

Wow, great job. That's what I would do too. You obviously have good insight into the general social divisions on the continent.

One exception though. While Scandinavia does have much in common with German countries, I do not think Scandinavians would mix very well. Scandinavia is its own unique cultural poltical region, despite a distant shared ethnic ancestry. And the Dutch may have culturally as much in common with the UK as with Germany. You would also need to divide up Belgium, half of them consider themselves more French than Dutch.

As for the Slavic region, it would work good in theory, but the Poles would never want to be in the same union with Russia. Even Slavic Nationalists acknowledged this. There is a deep seated historical resentment. The division has much more to do with political power than ethnicity. Poles fear the Russians would dominate any such Slavic union.

 

Neither would work for the Iberic part(Spain and Portugal). When Spain has regions that are independentists, do you think that they would tolerate that? The conflict would be exponentially increased.

 

You people take this way too serious.

I did indeed try to divide up Europe in the most simple of ways. And the way that I did this was to look at countries, which second and third languages that were most used in the population.

For countries like Poland, the Netherlands and Denmark it was pretty simple to put them in the "Germanic" category, since, if I remember correctly now, about 75% of their inhabitants understand German. And Scandinavia for another example. Sweden, Norway, Denmark and the rest, except for Finland has languages based on the Germanic branch. Finnish is not. And that is what I also looked at, culture. The Swedish language is very well mixed in to their(Finland) culture, so I though "why not put them there?". That simple.

I meantioned that Romania was a hard nut to crack, for a simple map like this. I am well aware that they don't speak a Slavic language and would fit in better with a Roman Empire. But that would mess up the map.

And of course, parts of Belgium, Switzerland and other countries with several languages should have been divided up differently. But I just didn't care.

Feel free to make your own map and post it in this thread.

Some other examples could be:

Scandinavia.
Germany-Austria-(n)Switzerland.(and perhaps Hungary?)
Baltic Union.
France-Belgium-(w)Switzerland.
UK-Netherlands.
Italy-(s)Switzerland.

 

Surely you made a mistake here. Poland is not really Germanic. And very few people in Denmark speak german, except near the border with germany. By far, english is the big second language in Denmark. Everyone speaks it, some a little better than others. Other than the handful of neo-nazis, I do not think the Danes would appreciate being under the same government with Germany. The culture is similar, certainly, but Denmark still has more in common with Scandinavia, I think.

That is true. Because of a long shared history, Finland is in many ways like an extension of Scandinavia. Many Swedish people traditionally settled in the southwest coastal areas of Finland, but recently it has been the other way around, and now many Finns are moving to Sweden for work. There is a huge number of people in Stockholm and Uppsala with recent Finnish ancestry. In the distant past, however, Finland had more in common ethnically and languistically with Estonia. There is still a sort of shared sense of ancestry, and Finland allows for special trade agreements with Estonia.

 

You made yours in Google Maps? May I ask you how you drew the lines along the borders? Don't tell me you did it manually..................

 

Yes very true. For Poland I more or less went on the fact that the German language is so widely known there. Russian is also a big language and English is becoming one. And I felt for the location of Poland that a Germanic alliance would fit in best.

For Scandinavia absolutely. English is by far the largest second language, and they could just as well be moved to a UK+Scandinavia Union of sorts. But German is their third largest language, and if I do remember correctly, Denmark has the most German speakers in Scandinavia.

So either a Scandinavian Union, a UK+Scandinavia or Germany+Scandinavia.

Yes very true. Finland could be part of a Baltic group also. But Estonia could just as well be part of Scandinavia also, with their Swedish heritage and all.

I used the second picture posted in the first post, and edited it in Photoshop. The "Political map of Europe.", which I found searching on Google.

 

That still ignores the cultural (and relatively recent language) differences within the UK - the UK is not just 'English' by any means.

 

You cannot just lump Poland under the same government with germany. There are clear ethnic, cultural, and not least of all, economic differences. To lump Poland together with Germany, you might as well just support turning the entire EU into a single nationless domain.

I suspect that, if forced to choose, the Poles would rather even unify with russia before they ever gave up their slavicness to merge with germany.

It does get rather complicated, as the north coast of Poland was formerly long ago part of germanic Prussia, but I think it is safe to say that any trace of germanic heritage here has been completely wiped out here, between the movement of people, mixing, and Communist purges that got rid of the last vestiges of any germanness (and german people!) that may have remained. During the Soviet occupation, the russians completely destroyed any monument and castles that could be traced to the prussians of the past, and shipped the few german-speakers that were left off to Siberia.

 

Someone forgets what the Poles did to get rid of the Germans after WW2 like it wasn't the biggest ethnic cleansing ever .

I say we should follow European traditions and let Norway and France duel over the ownership of British isles .

 

I see what you mean. But if we were to be that specific each country in itself should then be split up and no Unions at all could basically be made. I just try to make it simple, and by far Wales have more in common with the English and Scots than with any other European nationality.

And you live in a union as we speak, so I suppose it works out pretty fine after all?

But like I said, I do get your point.

 

Yep. Sorry irish people. You have just become too influenced by your english overlords over the last couple hundred years. Now we will just have to lump you into the UK.

 

No, it doesn't. It really doesn't. It's a very uneasy 'union' indeed, and always has been. One country is much larger, and very dominant. One of the other countries has a referendum coming up about whether to leave it altogether. There is a huge amount or resentment in various directions between the countries in the UK. As a simple example of this general disunity within the 'United' Kingdom, take a look around at the Welsh and Scottish members of this forum and the flags they choose to display - how many display the union flag alongside or instead of that of their own nation? Some do, of course, but many prefer not too (even though they may not actually favour exiting the union altogether).

Multi-national 'unions' are really not a very good way to cooperate across borders - independent nations working together variously in groups where they agree, and separately where they don't, in an atmosphere of mutual respect and friendship, are a much, much better solution to international cooperation altogether. Such a system would not create the inevitable build up of tensions and frictions that 'unions' inevitably do.

Whether the English, Welsh and Scots have more in common with each other than with other European nations is a matter of opinion and debate - don't be fooled by the fact that the majority speak the same language, and that we have lived for some time within the same 'state'. We do have things in common, but we also have cultural aspects that are very, very different (and histories which include some very bitter resentments between us too), and have more in common with some other European nations (not necessarily 'states') outside of the UK.