37.3496, Software: Glottography -- Mapping the World's Languages

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-37-3496. Fri 23 Oct 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.3496, Software: Glottography -- Mapping the World's Languages

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Date: 21-Oct-2026
From: Peter Ranacher [peter.ranacher at uzh.ch]
Subject: Glottography -- Mapping the World's Languages


Glottography documents more than 10,000 language areas, past and
present, making the geographic diversity of the world’s languages
accessible to all.
Glottography is an open-access platform that compiles and digitises
data on the geographic distribution of languages from academic
sources, transforming published maps into accessible digital
geographic information. It provides a systematic resource for
exploring where languages were and are spoken around the world, making
it possible to investigate linguistic diversity across both space and
time. To build this resource, hundreds of language maps from the
scientific literature, many previously available only in print, were
digitised and their language areas were linked to Glottocodes.
Glottography allows multiple representations of the same language
area, reflecting the fact that language boundaries can be subjective
and contested. Its flexible framework also allows new areas to be
added as new data and interpretations become available. Users can
explore the dataset through an interactive web map at
https://www.glottography.org/.
Glottography’s significance goes beyond simply showing where languages
are or were spoken. By documenting the geographic distribution of
languages, both past and present, Glottography provides a
comprehensive digital record of linguistic diversity across time and
space.  The resource is developed and maintained by researchers at the
University of Zurich, in collaboration with colleagues at Utrecht
University, Leiden University, the Max Planck Institute for
Evolutionary Anthropology, and the University of Turku. The project
and its findings are described in the research article “Glottography:
an open-source geolinguistic data platform for mapping the world’s
languages”, published in the Journal of Open Humanities Data.

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics
                     Historical Linguistics
                     Sociolinguistics


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