Tanzania is a fascinating country, famous for Kilimanjaro, the Serengeti and the waters around Zanzibar. Tanzania is also the heart of the Swahili language and Swahili media such as Swahiliwood. There are however many other languages in the country, and I wanted to find out more about the most widely spoken ones.
If you believe I got any of the borders wrong, or if there are more languages that should be included (for example for number of speakers, or mutual intelligibility etc.) please tell me! Or any other mistakes, comments etc.
HD map:
https://i.redd.it/xy519sy09r831.jpg
Footnotes:
-I only included languages with a native speakerbase over one million.
-There must be at least one million of the speakers in Tanzania, that means that the Luo and Maasai are for example not included because their speakers mostly reside in Kenya.
-I did not write the exact number nor estimates of the speakerbase for each language since the estimates vary wildly depending on source. Even the population of Tanzania is not certain since the last national census was conducted in 2012, and the estimates are known to miss by a few millions. Censuses regarding languages are sparse and far in between. A lot of guesswork going on here.
-I found sources saying Hehe and Bena are mutually intelligible, others saying they are not. I found sources saying Hangaza and Ha are mutually intelligible with Kinyarwanda/Kirundi, others saying they are not. My decisions in both cases might be wrong, and I would be happy to be corrected.
-I colored in Burundi and Rwanda to show their relation to Ha and Hangaza.
Norway is pretty diverse. Here is a map collection of Norway's biggest immigrant groups by province (fylke).
When I don't make maps I analyse DNA. That is at least one of my hobbies. I do this by analysing raw DNA data from third parties (usually MyHeritage) with DNA analysing algorithms supplied by the free service Genesis GED Match. My Brazilian friend told me about how his DNA results from MyHeritage were disappointing, assigning him Eastern European DNA when he knew for a fact his family history to be Native American. MyHeritage and other popular DNA testing companies often do not take into account non-european heritage into their estimates, or they do not do it very well, by using many algorithms you can get a much better estimate of someone's heritage. While these tests are never completely accurate since people are not bound to any geographical place, I believe this estimate based on at least 10 algorithms to be pretty good.
The Americas is a continent filled with stereotypes. Here are those that come to mind when I think of the not so old world.
What do you see when you look at the world map? How do you remember the countries if you close your eyes and try to remember them? Your own country and its neighbours are most likely very clear in your inner world, other places too, like Japan, the UK, the US, Western Europe. If you like geography perhaps you know the location of the Ural mountains, maybe you can point to Singapore or Lake Victoria. What the fewest of us can do is picture an accurate map of Africa, perhaps unless you are actually from Africa.
