How to use the atlas
The atlas shows every language in the world on a spinning globe. Here is everything you can find in it and how to use it – with a mouse, a finger or the keyboard.
The globe
Spin: grab the globe with the mouse or one finger and drag. Zoom: the mouse wheel, two fingers apart, the + and − buttons in the bar at the bottom, or the + and − keys.
Each dot is one language. Click it to open its card. From 2× zoom, language names appear next to the dots (you can turn them off in View).
Click a country away from the dots and the atlas shows how many languages are spoken there and lights them up.
The Whole world button brings the globe back to the start. Clicking the logo in the top left does the same.
The language card
Languages with a greeting have a painted postcard of their region, the greeting, how to say it and a Listen button (it uses your device's voice). Below are labels – how many people speak it, its family and how endangered it is – and tabs with a fun fact, vitality and relatives.
Other languages have the tabs Overview (where it is spoken, how endangered it is, dialects), How it works (word order, cases, tones, sounds) and Relatives.
Light arcs on the globe lead from the selected language to its closest relatives. The family tree line shows the path from their common ancestor.
The chain button copies a link to the language that you can send to a friend. On a phone the card sits at the bottom: drag it up to enlarge it, down to shrink or close it.
The list on the right
You can search for a language, a country or a dialect. The cross in the search box clears it.
Sort languages by family, alphabetically or by continent. Big tiles with a greeting come first, the other languages below.
The Language of the Day changes every midnight and always says why it was chosen – it has its own day, or we are travelling around the world with it. All such days are in the Calendar of language days. On the European Day of Languages, 26 September, a card with all the European languages takes its place.
The bar at the bottom
Surprise me picks a random language.
Family tree shows the tree of a whole language family. Drag to move it, use the wheel or two fingers to zoom, click a branch to focus on it and click a language to select it.
Vitality colours the languages by how endangered they are and shows a key. Tap the key to choose which levels to show.
View: auto-spin, language names, sign languages (all, none or only them) and vitality levels.
Comparing two languages
On a language card click Compare with another language and pick the second one – on the globe, in the list or by searching. The atlas shows whether they are related and where they split, how their grammar differs and how many people speak them.
Keyboard
Tab moves between controls. One Tab takes you into the language list; move between tiles with the arrow keys, Home and End jump to the start and end. Enter selects a language.
The + and − keys zoom the globe. Escape closes a window, the card or a panel.
About, sources, contact, guide and calendar
At the very bottom of the language list (on a phone, at the end of the page) there is a folded line with a book: About, sources, contact, guide and calendar. Tap it to open it and tap again to fold it.
Calendar of language days: every day of the year when a language has its own celebration – a language day, a national holiday or an anniversary. It opens at the nearest day, and clicking a language shows it on the globe.
About the data: where the atlas gets its information about languages (Glottolog, WALS and more), how recent it is and why the list has a few more languages than there are dots on the globe.
Full guide: what you are reading right now.
Languages with a greeting (on the website only): every language with a greeting on one page. Each opens like a card in a card index; use the arrows to flip to the next one, and you can listen to the greeting.
Contact: send an idea or a mistake by email to info@atlasjazyku.cz. Below that are the data sources and their licences.
More
In the top right you can switch the page language (Česky) and the day or night look. The atlas remembers your choices.
The atlas also hides a few secrets. Try searching for elves or Klingons…