Glottography: An Open-Source Geolinguistic Data Platform for Mapping the World’s Languages

Journal of Open Humanities Data, vol. 12

Abstract

Maps depicting the geographic location of languages are essential tools for linguistic research. Although many language maps are available in the scientific literature, most encode spatial information as static images, often on paper. In contrast, geographic databases store languages as georeferenced digital data, allowing integration with other datasets, quantitative geographic analyses, and mapping. At present, there is no open-access platform providing digital language areas. To address this limitation, we introduce Glottography, a free and open geolinguistic data platform for mapping the world’s languages. Glottography represents the speaker areas of the world’s languages as georeferenced spatial polygons, enriched with relevant metadata, including Glottocodes that link each polygon to a unique identifier in Glottolog, a database cataloguing the world’s dialects, languages, and language families. Glottography currently includes more than 13,000 language areas of 5,300 distinct languages, digitised from 29 source publications. For each source, the platform provides the data in its raw, unmodified form and aggregated at the levels of languages and language families, according to the classification in Glottolog. Glottography is accessible through Rglottography, an R package, and is accompanied by detailed tutorials for usage and data acquisition that encourage users to contribute new geodata to the platform. Being the first open data source of its kind, Glottography enables computational analyses that explore the origins, distribution, and drivers of global linguistic diversity.

Authors 19

1. Peter Ranacher

   University of Zurich

   Affiliation as printed

   University Research Priority Program (URPP) ‘Language and Space’, University of Zurich, Zurich; Department of Geography, University of Zurich, Zurich

2. Robert Forkel

   Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

   Affiliation as printed

   Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig

3. Nour Efrat-Kowalsky

   University of Zurich

   Affiliation as printed

   University Research Priority Program (URPP) ‘Language and Space’, University of Zurich, Zurich; Department of Geography, University of Zurich, Zurich

4. Matthias Urban

   Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique · Université Lumière Lyon 2 · Laboratoire Dynamique du Langage

   Affiliation as printed

   Laboratoire “Dynamique du Langage”, UMR 5596, CNRS & Université Lumière Lyon 2, Lyon

5. Antonia Hehli

   University of Zurich

   Affiliation as printed

   University Research Priority Program (URPP) ‘Language and Space’, University of Zurich, Zurich; Department of Geography, University of Zurich, Zurich

6. Micha Franz

   University of Zurich

   Affiliation as printed

   University Research Priority Program (URPP) ‘Language and Space’, University of Zurich, Zurich; Department of Geography, University of Zurich, Zurich

7. Gregory Biland

   University of Zurich

   Affiliation as printed

   University Research Priority Program (URPP) ‘Language and Space’, University of Zurich, Zurich; Department of Geography, University of Zurich, Zurich

8. Aaron Kreienbühl

   University of Zurich

   Affiliation as printed

   University Research Priority Program (URPP) ‘Language and Space’, University of Zurich, Zurich; Department of Geography, University of Zurich, Zurich

9. Alba Hermida Rodríguez

   Ghent University

   Affiliation as printed

   Faculty of Arts and Philosophy, Ghent University, Ghent

10. Matheus C. B. C. Azevedo

    Radboud University Nijmegen

    Affiliation as printed

    Department of Modern Languages and Cultures, Radboud University, Nijmegen

11. James Giebler

    Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique · Université Lumière Lyon 2 · Laboratoire Dynamique du Langage

    Affiliation as printed

    Laboratoire “Dynamique du Langage”, UMR 5596, CNRS & Université Lumière Lyon 2, Lyon

12. Takuya Takahashi

    University of Zurich

    Affiliation as printed

    Department of Geography, University of Zurich, Zurich

13. Nico Neureiter

    University of Zurich

    Affiliation as printed

    Department of Geography, University of Zurich, Zurich; University Research Priority Program (URPP) ‘Language and Space’, University of Zurich, Zurich

14. Rik van Gijn Aachen

    Leiden University

    Affiliation as printed

    Leiden University Centre for Linguistics, Leiden University, Leiden

15. Meeli Roose

    University of Turku

    Affiliation as printed

    Department of Geography and Geology, University of Turku, Turku

16. Outi Vesakoski

    University of Turku

    Affiliation as printed

    School of Languages and Translation Studies, University of Turku

17. Robert Weibel

    University of Zurich

    Affiliation as printed

    Department of Geography, University of Zurich, Zurich; University Research Priority Program (URPP) ‘Language and Space’, University of Zurich, Zurich

18. Gereon Alexander Kaiping

    University of Zurich

    Affiliation as printed

    Department of Geography, University of Zurich, Zurich

19. Sietze J. Norder corresponding

    Utrecht University

    Affiliation as printed

    Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Faculty of Geosciences, Utrecht University, Utrecht