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Basically i visit the Ethnologue website about 1-2 times a day, and i still wonder how they make their maps, like these:

It's so realistic and i want to make one for the Philippines, my home country. I really want to do it sometimes because sometimes i'm so bored. I can't seem to find any tool on the internet that can make linguistic maps. I know i can just do it on a piece of paper but the problem here is that i want it to be colored, for example if the place where the language spoken in is colored purple, it would mean that it's an Austronesian language then if it's blue i would like to indicate that it's a language isolate (Not sure if there's any language isolates in the Philippines) and stuff like that.

Sir Cornflakes
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Rydex
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  • @jk-ReinstateMonica Not even close. the answer i got there did not match the style ethnologue makes their maps look like. They're too advanced and realistic, i want a simple, plain map maker. – Rydex May 16 '22 at 13:05
  • SIL maps are made from actual data collected on the spot. This makes a database and the database makes the map. Do you have a linguistic database of the Philippines? – jlawler May 16 '22 at 15:46
  • @jlawler No i do not. Ethnologue said it was made by some sort of tool and not using a database. – Rydex May 16 '22 at 16:23
  • @jlawler Basically i don't mean the whole "database" thing you're talking about, i am looking for a tool that basically lets you create your own linguistic map, You said that "SIL maps are made from actual data collected on the spot" So does this mean that making a database already generates a map for you? – Rydex May 16 '22 at 16:29
  • They make their own tools and design their own databases to drive them, and do the surveys to get the data. They have thousands of workers worldwide; they're a religious organization, you know. Have you looked at their work on Philippine languages? I know there have been SIL workers there for decades. – jlawler May 16 '22 at 16:30
  • @jlawler I have not looked at their work on the Philippine languages; What i'm trying to do here is find the tool they actually use to draw their maps. I can't even find the tool on SIL. – Rydex May 17 '22 at 00:29
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    You could email SIL and ask about the toolset they use for this. I know plenty of linguists are using R to make cholopleth-type maps, some info here: https://r-graph-gallery.com/choropleth-map.html – Gaston Ümlaut May 17 '22 at 04:04

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