A couple of years ago I reported on the MLA‘s interactive language map of the US; Ben Zimmer of Language Log now informs us that the site has added new features, including actual density of speakers (which means you can see the counties where, say, Spanish-speakers are a large proportion of the population, even if there aren’t a lot of them—see Ben’s post for a nice graphic demonstration of the difference it makes in Texas). “Not only does the new improved site generate percentage-based maps for different languages, it has a whole host of enhancements, including a Data Center with statistics for more than 300 languages searchable all the way down to the municipal level.” Day by day, in every way, the internet gets better and better…
What’s going on — Dutch is not among the options.
The detail report with all 300 languages lists Dutch with 150,490 speakers, which puts it ahead of Laotian, Thai and Hungarian — so the question is, how/why were the language available on the main map pulldown selected?
I checked the MLA site back in 2004, and it *used to* have a LOT more language, including Dutch but also more obscure ones like Apache, Czech, etc. etc. I don’t understand why they chose to include certain languages but not others. Perhaps languages like Thai/Laotian etc. are more singificant across different regions or something like that?