Maps of Estonian

National Ethnic Makeup - People of Russia


National Ethnic Makeup - People of Russia

Source: 2004. Natsionalnyi atlas Rossii v Chetyrekh. Vol 3. Moscow: Federalnaia sluzhba geodezii i kartografii Rossii.
Date Digitized: June 2010

Map Description:
This map displays the contemporary distribution of ethnic groups in Russia. It includes a set of points for which there was no corresponding item in the original map's legend. This set is designated here as "Unknown Ethnic Group". The map comes from a four volume set of Russian cartographic data from geology to history.



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Soviet Languages


Languages of the Soviet Union

Source: Milner-Gulland, Robin with Nikolai Dejevsky. 1989. Cultural Atlas of Russia and the Soviet Union 
Date Digitized:   February 2011

Map Description:
"Two great language families dominate the territory of the Soviet Union. The larger is the Slavonic, comprising the closely related Russian, Ukrainian and Belorussian. Native speakers of Russian extend from the Gulf of Finland to the Pacific; nevertheless they are now less than half the total population. The other family is the Turkic, most of whose recognized languages and dialects are intercomprehensible: it extends from the Azerbayjan to Yakutia. Other non-Indo-European language families include the Finnic to the north and the Caucasian group to the south."

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The UNESCO Database of Endangered Languages (UNESCO)

The UNESCO Database of Endangered Languages

Map Creator:   LINGUIST List (Anthony Aristar)
Data Source:   Mosely Christopher. 2010. Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger, 3rd edn. Paris, UNESCO Publishing, Online version. http://www.unesco.org/culture/languages-atlas/ (29 November 2010)
Contact:   llmaplinguistlist.org
Usage Notes/Copyright Status:   Used by Permission
Date Created:   29 November 2010

Map Description:
UNESCO’s Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger is a database intended to raise awareness about language endangerment and the need to safeguard the world’s linguistic diversity among policy-makers, speaker communities and the general public, and to be a tool to monitor the status of endangered languages and the trends in linguistic diversity at the global level.

Degrees of endangerment
The map designates the degrees of endangerment as based on UNESCO’s Language Vitality and Endangerment framework.

This establishes six degrees of vitality/endangerment based on nine factors. Of these factors, the most salient is that of intergenerational transmission.

Degree of endangerment Intergenerational Language Transmission
safe language is spoken by all generations; intergenerational transmission is uninterrupted
>> not included in the map
vulnerable most children speak the language, but it may be restricted to certain domains (e.g., home)
definitely endangered children no longer learn the language as mother tongue in the home
severely endangered language is spoken by grandparents and older generations; while the parent generation may understand it, they do not speak it to children or among themselves
critically endangered the youngest speakers are grandparents and older, and they speak the language partially and infrequently
extinct there are no speakers left
>> included in the Atlas if presumably extinct since the 1950s




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West Caucasus: Abkhazia - the language situation in the early 21st century



Abkhazia - the language situation in the early 21st century



Note: Scanned or downloaded images have been geo-registered for compatibility with our project interface. Slight imperfections are an inevitable result of the registration process. View original image(s) to see the unaltered map(s).