This cool interactive map lets you explore the world's languages

Do you know Tohono from lu Mien?

Interactive language map.
(Image credit: http://langscape.umd.edu/)
Arika Okrent
By
published

You know about French, Spanish, and Russian, but what about Tohono Oodham, Karaim, and Iu Mien? There are thousands of languages in the world, and the Language Science Center at the University of Maryland has created a tool that makes it fun and easy to explore them.

Langscape is an interactive map of the locations of 6400 of the world's languages. The map lets you easily view detailed information about each language and listen to sound recordings of them. It's kind of hard to explain what makes it so cool, so I made a video to give you a taste of the kind of things you can discover with it. (It's my first screenshot video, so bear with me on the fuzzy production values. I'll try to do better next time!)

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Arika Okrent
Arika Okrent

Arika Okrent is editor-at-large at TheWeek.com and a frequent contributor to Mental Floss. She is the author of In the Land of Invented Languages, a history of the attempt to build a better language. She holds a doctorate in linguistics and a first-level certification in Klingon. Follow her on Twitter.

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