Twitter Tongues Shows Geographical Multilinguality Of London And NYC

Twitter truly seems to be an all-knowing entity. If we would like to see how many people are talking about chipmunks in Italy, it could tell us in a second, with even more precise data for regions and cities. Twitter Tongues uses Twitter to show us the languages of tweets sent from London and New York in the summer of 2012, and provides a unique look into these multilingual cities.

Playing around with the website application gives a very interesting insight into the different districts that have more or less inhabitants of a certain tongue than others. For example, it is clear that there are some very large districts where the widely spoken language seems to be Arabic, and there are some very compact areas that have many French-speaking people.

Twitter Tongues

Twitter Tongues gives some great insight into something not widely documented. Districts with different languages are somewhat known, but Twitter Tongues presents them very clear visual way. Twitter Tongues might just be one of the most accurate endeavours into mapping the niche-spatiality of spoken languages.

Twitter Tongues

Compared to tweets from world capitals like London and New York, it would be interesting to see how smaller cities fare with this kind of data visualization. Perhaps there are some hidden ‘Chinatowns’ out there that Twitter Tongues could visualize for us!

Related Insights

Unreal City

Augmented Reality App Makes the Art Exhibition COVID-Proof

An augmented reality exhibition along the River Thames transforms London’s public space into a COVID-proof digital museum.

Mitigation of Shock

Is This the Climate Change-Ravaged Future of Urban Living?

Design studio Superflux has created an installation of how future homes might look like considering the realities of climate change.

Parker Dairies

Milkmen Are Back in Business to Deliver Plastic-Free to Londoners’ Doorsteps

The sound of an electric motor and the clink of bottles in a crate are having a comeback with milkmen and milkwomen hopping back on their milk floats across the UK.