Not sure if this is valid enough to be a topic or not, but. Just a quick question on my mind. I recently came across Linguasphere and I like it. But I had been looking through ISO codes previously to know about languages, as far as delineation goes. And before Linguasphere, I saw that Ethnologue had languages neatly tidied up into families and such. But, with Linguasphere, it groups the more alike languages with each other as one language, so that instead of almost 7,000 languages catalogued, it has 4,999.
Not for an in-depth look at languages and all that, just for a list of some sort of languages organized in relation to other languages, what do you find better? More reliable or just more aesthetically pleasing? Is there more than just Linguasphere and ISO?
Linguasphere or Ethnologue? Or?
Re: Linguasphere or Ethnologue? Or?
I'm honestly surprised the Linguasphere is back up. It kind of disappeared for years, making me think it had gone defunct. But the core difference between it and ISO is that the Linguasphere tends to categorize everything geographically, as opposed to ISO, which tends to base itself off existing literature and conventions. This leads to certain problems where, for example, one will divide a region into multiple variants while the other doesn't. For instance, Okinawan is split across 3-4 variants in the Linguasphere, while it's considered one single language in ISO.
I guess, I do like the fact that the Linguasphere goes into detail for regional varieties, it's just a shame that some can be very detailed, while others aren't. Some classification decisions also seem to be very arbitrary to me. But I don't really bother with either of them when I'm looking at languages, because they don't do anything other than classify them. I suppose you could say Wikipedia does the same thing.
I guess, I do like the fact that the Linguasphere goes into detail for regional varieties, it's just a shame that some can be very detailed, while others aren't. Some classification decisions also seem to be very arbitrary to me. But I don't really bother with either of them when I'm looking at languages, because they don't do anything other than classify them. I suppose you could say Wikipedia does the same thing.
Chances are it's Ryukyuan (Resources).
Re: Linguasphere or Ethnologue? Or?
I just had a brief look through them, with attention to Northeast Asia and the Russian Far East (where there are lots of language isolates, unclassified languages, or languages of dubious affiliation). It's a really worthwhile to break groups out by geographical region in a better way than "by country". I like that Linguasphere elevates areal grouping to the same rank as family grouping.