I suppose this map is about the second biggest "mother tongue" in each country? In that case I find it surprisng that German is the second language in the Netherlands. According to some numbers I could dig up, there are about 386.000 Germans living in The Netherlands, while there are about 450.000 speakers of Frisian... What source are you using for that map?
Cool map. Bit surprised to see Romania has Hungarian, not French, and more amused to see Hindi in England.
Dutch low Saxon is not German. It's something in between German and Standard Dutch. It was recognized as a "reginal language" based on a couple of parameters set by the Dutch government. But I don't think it can be considered a "real" language. As far as I know (and maybe a Dutch member can correct me), there are no formal, uniform rules for spelling, grammar and even vocabulary. It's more like a family of similar dialects.Dutch Low Saxon is spoken by 1,798,000 speakers. "From a diachronic point of view, the Dutch Low Saxon dialects are merely the Low Saxon dialects which are native to areas in the Netherlands" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Low_Saxon
I assumed that Dutch Low Saxon is a dialect of German.
Dutch low Saxon is not German. It's something in between German and Standard Dutch. It was recognized as a "reginal language" based on a couple of parameters set by the Dutch government. But I don't think it can be considered a "real" language. As far as I know (and maybe a Dutch member can correct me), there are no formal, uniform rules for spelling, grammar and even vocabulary. It's more like a family of similar dialects.
Global Peace Index 2009
You can read more on that here
I hope this doesn't turn into "but my country is peaceful, this criteria is crap"
Good catch! Here's a better map:
Theres something wrong with the categories if Afghanistan and Russia are in the same one. Its obviously not weighted by population.
They are arbitrarily decided cut-off points. The two countries could be at the maximum and minimum of the range, and actually are pretty close to them.Theres something wrong with the categories if Afghanistan and Russia are in the same one. Its obviously not weighted by population.
Yay Canada.Global Peace Index 2009
Yeah, they're close, I guess, but Russia has a big army and has been involved in a lot more wars than Afghanistan lately, relations with neighbouring countries aren't that great (to say the least), etc. There's a lot of factors they look at - you should check out the list.
The size of an army has nothing to do with how non-"peaceful" a country is.