What If European Countries Were Divided By Language? 

Do you live in an area that speaks multiple languages?

"Portugal is the perfect nation-state" - a Portuguese dude.

"Super germany" Rest of Europe: DON'T GIVE THEM IDEAS AGAIN

One you missed is Sardinian. I had a Sardinian exchange student stay with my family for a year and he was adamant that Italian and Sardinian are different languages. He set out to prove this by speaking Sardinian to another exchange student from Italy (specifically Milan) and she says she could understand about 60% of it. Apparently that's less than Swedes and Norwegians can understand from eachother so I'd say it's definitely a language

Hungarian language being a part of the Uralic family is one of the strangest things I learned from the history of my language(Estonian)

There are a lot of oversemplifications, especially in the Southern countries. Setting Galician apart from Portuguese while implying that Sardinian, a language on its own, is a dialect of Italian sounds very arbitrary; not to mention that Alghero (in Sardinia) counts very few Catalan speakers, while Corse has a language that is a proper (in this case) dialect of Italian. I guess the map you’ve found tends to enlighten the territories where a minority/secondary language is officially recognized, which is the case in Spain and Italy while France has always strongly opposed to any recognition.

Italian dialects are, in fact, local languages. The meaning of "dialect" is quite different from the rest of the world. You also forgot about Occitan, the language spoken in Southern France and very different from French (a prestige language in Medieval Ages, but nowadays at risk of extinction).

Hey man! where is occitan?

Norwegian, Danish and Swedish are in many ways the same language. I can give you an example. Yesterday I was in a shop and bought some clothes. I spoke norwegian, and the woman who sold me the clothes spoke swedish. We have some words that are different, but we have no problems to understand each other.

Completely ignored Malta. Maltese is very linguisticaly unique in Europe, considering it is *semitic* see no. 97 in 9:43 but mixed with A LOT of Romance (Italian) Sad Maltese here 🇲🇹

'A super Germany would exist' I feel like I've heard that somewhere before...

Hungarian and Finnish are related, even if it's not visible :) and they are both Uralic languages. I've learned some Finnish and seen that the logic of their grammar is almost the same as in Hungarian. And yes, Hungarians have come from the Ural region, and arrived to the Carpathian Basin in the 9th century. And Hungarian speakers outside of current Hungary is a painpoint for many countries still today. The Hungarian Kingdom included other nationalities who were not treated as equal at the time of the national movements from the 19th century. This led to them wanting to take a "revenge" on Hungary after WWI and the newly formed countries have taken territories where Hungarian speakers lived. (Which led to further problems...)

French from Alsace here : -> Alsace-Lorraine speaks two dialects of "German", Alsatian and Plattdeutsch, these are not Hochdeutsch but southern dialects. However, from my experience, the degree of intercomprehension is variable, though we could communicated with our Schwaben neighbor, it was impossible for my friends from the North of Germany to understand it (we made several experiences hehe). -> However, most people especially the younger generation have little to no knowledge of this dialects. -> Also in Italy i think French is no longer spoken or only minimaly in Aoste valley.

As many comments have implied the difference between a language and a dialect is not always clear which leads to confusion. Great video.

I suggest in the future to devote slightly more time in research. It would have been easy to find out the exact historical reasons for the Uralic languages in Europe, or why Romanian is a Romance language - making it unnecessary to guess and hypothesize.

A finn could have a short discussion with a carelian. The biggest way they differ from each other is the way they're written. Words have mostly same meanings and structure of the language is similar. Eesti for finns sounds like they're trying really hard to speak finnish but they're making up new words and new meanings to words. But we're pals, I wish to visit soon again ❤️

Somebody had that idea of a nation encompassing all speakers of their language around the end of the 1930s. It did not end well.

If the languages in Europe became it's own country. The amount of cluster- fudge and border gore would offend everyone.

You have missed a few things. 1. in the south of France there is another minority language called "Occitaine". Also, there is Corse. In Germany there are two more minority languages in the north, one is Danish and the other one is Frisian. I probably missed some as well.

Friuli once was an independent nation, and also one of the first democracy of Europe. Born in 1077, the Patriarchate of Aquileia had one of the first forms of parliamentary government where aristocracy, church and volgus (common people/citizens) was equally represented. It lasted until Venetians came to conquer and occupy our land.

2:42 Where is Occitan on your map? Occitan is the language of the southern half of France, Catalan in Spain is a twin language of Occitan. Occitan (Catalan) is not French and not Spanish. _Ont es l'occitan sus la vòstra mapa ? occitan es la lenga parlada dins lo miegjorn de la França, lo catalan en Espanha es una lenga bessona de l'occitan. L'occitan (lo catalan) es pas brica francés, espanhòl tanpauc._

Actually all those Italian dialects are considered by experts as being their own languages, since they evolved independently from each other and not from standard Italian. Some of them, like Sardinian, are even officially recognised as such, even if in school it is taught that most of them are just dialects. I could understand not including them alla since it would make the map a mess and the vast majority of people who speak a regional language also speak Italian, but at least they could have included Sardinian because of its official status

To say that all of Italy speaks dialects of standard Italian is a major oversimplification. They're mostly dialects of the Romance language continuum, but they're not all on the same branch. But great video regardless!

It is so sad that Slovenian language wasn't even mentioned, while you also wrote Slovakia instead of Slovenia in a video about country name origins. You shouldn't neglect one country while thoroughly covering the others. Otherwise great videos.

As a Hungarian, I think the Uralic Union with Finland, Estonia and Hungary would be based, but cursed. 5:06 Also speaking of dialects, I'm from a region of Hungary, where 3 different dialects have a tripoint, so I kinda speak 3-ish dialects of Hungarian

Corse has nothing to do with french, it developed from medieval Italian and it is intelligible to Italian, not to french, which developed in a whole different area (not even in southern France so the closest part of France to Corsica but in northern France). Plus the definition of Italian dialect is different from the traditional one. They are actually languages. They share a lot in common, since they were all highly influenced in vocabulary and phonetic by Italian, but they are actually different languages.

the thing is that sometimes there isnt a clear line between dialect and language for example most people consider galician the same as portuguese,or bulgarian the same as macedonian or that a lot of germany doesnt actually speak "german"(standard german) they speak regional germanic languages which sometimes is unintelligible to standard german like bavarian or low german, same thing goes for italy. however both italy and germany are a dialect continuum the german one even includes netherlands and belgium

I feel like many of these borders' extent are so arbitrary, or perhaps just simply historical, because today some of these languages have very little population of speakers(percentage wise). Like Breton for example, only has around 200,000 speakers, which is less than 5% of the total population of modern-day Brittany. It's even lower when it comes to French Flemish speakers up north, with less than 100k. Perhaps, Alsatian and Occitan have significant numbers of speakers, to maybe be shown in the map. I bring this up because I just watched the South American video of this topic and Quechuan languages didn't have separate borders like how Breton have their own borders here. There are millions of Quechuan speakers and are far more significant in number of speakers compared to Breton, Alsatian, and French Flemish speakers, and yet, they were just merged/absorbed within the borders of Spanish.

Two countries that could merge in the future are Moldova and Romania, not only because of the common language but culture as well. They have been one country in the past so its not entirely possible.

This is really a minefield. If you want to do this subject justice, you need at least 20 hours more time to go much deeper. 😉 Nation-state language are somewhat arbitrary. Do you know that you can walk from e.g. Porto in Portugal to Messina in Italy and each village could communicate well with its neighbours. Where does a language start, where does it end? That's really tricky. The same goes for Dutch and German; Danish, Swedish and Norwegian; Macedonian and Bulgarian. Bielorussian and Ukrainian. Karelean has lots of Russian words in it, but remains a Finnish dialect? And history is a huge !!!! factor everywhere. For example many Germans can understand Dutch better than Bavarian for example. 😆 Just saying. ....

In France, the state has tried for a long time to reduce the use of regional languages like basque or breton. They're not really used anymore by younger generations. However, you forgot Corsican which I think is spoken more widely among the population because of a stronger will for independence. Same thing in Alsace Lorraine, French is widely spoken and 'Alsacien' is - I think - a form of German, not real German.

There is a village in Ukraine where people used to speak swedish in, But i think all those people are gone now. "Gammalsvenskby" in Ukraine. As a swede, I found that hella interesting.

The Dutch government recognises two more languages: Low Saxon, spoken in the north and east of the country, and Limburgish, spoken in the southeast. Both languages are spoken in parts of Germany as well.

did he just completely avoided/forgot to mention all the western slavic countries or am I having some memory issues?

In Corse is spoken a language that derived from an Italian dialect and has nothing to share with french

As a Hungarian I would like to thank you for dedicating much for hungarian language. So yes those who live in surrounding countries are hungarians, they live there since 896 (the Hungarian nomads arrived from Ural territory). In 1920 two thirds of our territory was tken away, however c.c 50% of the population on those territories werent hugarians, but romanians, slovakians etc. All in all 5 million hungarians were torn away from the motherland, and since then (1920) their population is smaller every year.

Where is the Occitan language? estimates range from 100,000 to 800,000 speakers in total today, that's a lot! ranked 46th language by the Calvet barometer measuring the weight of the world's languages in 2012. I see that you put Catalan in Spain, yet Catalan was considered only a dialect of Occitan until the end of the 19th century. Moreover, in Catalonia, Occitan is a co-official language with Catalan and Spanish.

Estonian here. The Southern Estonian "language" is not really much different from the standard Estonian and is more like a dialect.

O legado de Roma ainda sobrevive nos dias de hoje 🇵🇹🇪🇸🇫🇷🇮🇹🇷🇴

I'm from Portugal and I've been following your channel for some time, I even understand English but I would be happy if you put subtitles in Portuguese and in other languages ​​so that other people who don't speak English natively can enjoy your content

love this content!! youre amazing

Just a small remark. Wallonia isn't a province of Belgium. It is however one of the three regions. It is itself split up in 5 provinces

I respect your work and I know that this is an impossible task: what differenciates a language from a dialect is not always clear and depending on how you interpret it it can change everything! Also I don't understand how big a language has to be to be counted (how is corsican not on the map for example?) My region for example can be seen as divided between italian and german if you oversimplify, but if you want to go too much into detail (to the point that the map is unintelligible and that it is controversial whether a couple of choices are actually languages) you have venetian, lombard, german, cimbrian, ladin, mocheno, nones ladin, trentin and italian

in Poland there are 3 languages : Polish, kashubian and silesian

Hungarian here and yes there are still sizeable Hungarian populations in neighbouring countries. Most of these are located in Romania however, the next most are located in Slovakia and Serbia. I have met many Slovakian Hungarians and have a lot of friends from Transylvania! There’s approx. 1.5 million Hungarian still left in Transylvania today.

6:31 I'll give you some explanation (whoever is Moldovan too correct me if I'm wrong) So, most of Moldova speaks Romanian/Moldovan(which is the same except small differences and Russian slangs) but in the autonomous region of Gagauzia it's spoken Gagauz, a turkic language, and then to the east there's a small stripe that is Transnistria/Pridnestrovie, an unrecognised country which already declared independence, there it's spoken Moldovan too in some places, to the north Ukrainian and to the south of it (closer to the capital) it's spoken Russian, which is their official language

The Netherlands has an officially recognised minor language called Nedersaksisch (Low Saxon, also known as Low German) that stretches all the way into Russia's Kaliningrad. It has different dialects so it would be limited but older people that still speak the language could have a conversation with each other throughout that area.

Standard French is the Paris Region language. Northern France has its own languages like Picard (even though Dutch Flemish is mentioned)

The nation most likely to split up based on language is obviously Spain. The nations most likely to combine via language are probably Germany and Austria but that's harder to say for certain

Catalan and basque are also spoken in french territory. In France are also spoken occitan (forgotten in the video) and corsican, in the island of Corsica (along with the mentioned in the video). In Italy (where, as you say, catalan is also still spoken in a corner of sardinia) are also spoken Sicilian, Sardinian, Napolitan and venetian, at least. In italy they call them "dialects". yes, they are "dialects" from the latin, as it is "italian" (in fact is tuscan, from the toscania region) itself. In spain, along with basque, galaico-portuguese (galego and portuguese are the same language) and catalan are also spoken aragonese, asturianu and occitan (in a catalan valley, the only place where occitan has official recognition (by catalan authorities) ). about "what makes sense" 10:47 i would say that what makes sense is to left to people to chose what makes sense: is called democracy and human rights. Most of current borders come from wars, written by blood, and after that most, if not all the states tried to destroy the languages of the minorities left within each state. So if i should chose between a border written in blood and pursuing cultural genocide or democracy, i chose the second. whatever you think that makes sense or not.

As a people living in Alsace (the region of France shown as german speaking) i can say that even if a significant part of the population that might be under 50% i think speak german it is a second language that they learned at school and in an overwhelming majority it ins’t the language that people use in their everyday life (i dont speak German for example) but we have a regional language like the breton that is a mixte of french and german (like catalan is a mixte of french and spanish in a certain way) and this language is spoke fluently by at least as many people as german in Alsace and unlike german even if we speak french most of the time we use some world of these language when we talk ( a similar case to breton) but no problem its a really good vidéo i enjoyed it i just wanted to give my knowledge of the subject considering im directly concerned

In Germany, there is still Low German in the north, but there the dialects differ greatly by region. In East Frisia where I grew up we have more loan words from Dutch, in some churches the service was even held in Dutch until the First World War. Low German in East Frisia is also closely related to the "Gronings" dialect in the Netherlands and people understand each other very well, while standard Dutch is again different. The verb for "to speak" in our Low German is "proten" (from Dutch: praten) and otherwise "schnacken" is almost always used. Now I live in Friesland (not to be confused with Dutch Friesland) and there is a "boarder" between villages between "proten" and "schnacken", because some villages had stronger connections to East Frisia due to natural barriers (moor, North Sea coastline). I am 33 and unfortunately only a few people my age still speak relatively fluent Low German, which I find a great pity. I work in customer service for Germany and Austria in quality assurance and there are also some dialect forms in Austria that are quite difficult for me to understand, as well as Swiss German or Luxembourgish. My mother has lived at the other end of Germany in southeastern Bavaria for 10 years and when I visit her, I always have to pay very close attention to what is being said with long-established dialect speakers and still only understand about 60-70% and the rest I have to guess or infer from the context.

Skopje should have the Bulgarian language

Next is Asia please. Excellent video as always 👍

5:22 Ladin is a minority language descended from Latin but with a lot a German influence, and Friulian is just really different from Italian (to me because they included it, they should've also added Sardinian and maybe Neapolitan?)

Manque l'occitan ; et le corse aussi.

The language group issue provides its own set of problems. For example English speakers can't understand Germans but Spanish speakers can understand Portuguese if they speak slowly. I would say just because there is a root language group doesn't mean structurally the languages are compatible to each other. Then add culture on top of that and culturally Romanians are similar to Slavs not Latins. Same could be said with swedish people having a culture closer to Russia than Germany.

Vous avez oublié l’Occitan dans toute la moitié sud de la France , ainsi que l’Arpitan , le Corse , le Sarde, le Cornique dans le sud de L’Angleterre .

Hey, a Moldovan here! Basically, this map regarding Moldova is very wrong. While it's true that the southern territories have a kind of their own language, there is still some inaccuracy. Let me explain. So, first of all, almost all the territory of Moldova must be a mix of the 2 languages - them being romanian and russian, and not just small particles of russian here and there. Because the majority of our population knows and speaks both languages, at least on the basic level and uses them in daily life. Also for those who ask: Why romanian and not moldavian language? If short, romanian is an umbrella term for 3 dialects: moldavian, wallachian and transylvanian. Each from its own part (while Wallachia and Moldova were kingdoms back then, Transylvania was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire), that united in one country under the name of Romania (but we parted ways at some point). Thus there's no wrong answer between romanian and moldavian, cause it's basically the same language. Second, that mixture of languages that you see in the south, is not situated in Moldova. That is our former territory, that's why there are particles of romanian language in there. However now it is under Ukraine, if you pay attention you will see the borderline between Republic of Moldova and that mix of green. But it's true, indeed, that russian language plays a much bigger role in the East and South of the country... Let's say - because of the cultural and political preferences of the population there; that is Transnistria and Gagauz (it's a lot to write in order to explain this, so i'll gladly try my best to do that only if someone's interested). Lastly, about the Gagauz. The gagauz people also speak 2 languages, mostly russian and gagauz, from what i know (and some even 3 if we include those who know romanian). I'm not gagauz and i don't really know their history, so i'll use the open info from the internet (Thanks, Wikipedia!). So, the ancestors of the gagauz people today, immigrated from the current-day Bulgarian Black Sea coast, north of Varna, to Russian Empire and settled in the region that is now the current-day Republic of Moldova. My take is that, at that time the balkanic territories (including Bulgaria) and its languages were majorly influenced by the Ottoman Empire while under its rule, and when gagauz came to Russian Empire it was yet again influenced. Well, as any language that is in great proximity to other languages and territories over decades. I don't know if i'm right or wrong, but it makes sense to me, as it is stated in wiki that though gagauz is a distinct language from Balkan Gagauz Turkish, it is a language derived from it. It is also stated, and you can see that by the color code on that map too, that gagauz is a language with turkic roots, alongside Azerbaijani, Turkmen, and Turkish. And besides Moldova it is also spoken in some regions of the Ukraine, Russia (that were influenced by turkic population) and Turkey itself. Plus, fun fact: despite gagauz being a pretty old language, as an official and written language it is surprisingly young (1957). So yeah, something like this! I hope the information i brought helped clarifying things and it wasn't boring. I also hope that i explained well, because english is not my first (nor second xD ) language, thus there may be mistakes. Enjoy your time of the day (whatever it is)!

I caught some mistakes about languages in the Netherlands. 1. The map showed about the Frisian language isn't accurate (in modern sense). In West-Friesland, Groningen, Ostfriesland, Wilhelmshaven and Bremerhaven, Frisian has been extinct. West-Fries is an Hollandic language, Gronings, Ostfries Low German and the other dialects in the Weser-Ems region are Low Saxon. Don't get me wrong they used to be Frisian and they still have a Frisian substrate but they aren't Frisian! 2. You should definitely have included Low Saxon/Low German as a separate language, it is spoken in a huge area, yes there isn't a standard version but is Friulian? Catalan?

Small remark about Belgium: Walloonia is not a province, it's a region. Withing the region there are 5 provinces (the same for Flanders)

My family is from Italy, near Venice. My parents spoke the dialect of the region together and Italian to me. I understand almost every Italian dialect. Unless very old people are speaking very fast. The Southern dialects of course are more difficult but after 2 weeks constantly hearing them it's ok. My aunt married a Furlan - a man speaking Friaul. I do not understand him and I often spend time in Friuli. Just saying. As I grew up in Switzerland, the German speaking part, my main language is German and I understand every dialect. In both languages of course there are single words in some dialects that I do not know. But I can follow a conversation or understand a radio programm.

Some larger areas that you showed share the same language have probably dozens of dialects that aggravate understanding. At least this is true for Germany. Also there are local languages still in the process of fading - so slightly present - like Low German or Plattdüütsch ("Flat German"), which also has its dialects that might be audible if you only cross a river. This example is one of the remaining languages of the Hanseatic League. Standard German or Hochdeutsch as the most spread German language today was first introduced as a mostly written language to unify the writing in the German Empire. During the first half of the past century Standard German was spread by the education system indoctrinating that the local languages are only used by the uncultured and uneducated. At least that is true for the northern half of Germany. States like Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg, Hesse, and Saxony remained their strong dialects that are sometimes hard to understand for foreigners even from other German states. So I would conclude that there could be a flood of countries if they were founded based on the language only. Additionally it would be at least questionable wether these new country could form political or economic entities.

Fun fact: Sicilians speak Sicilian, not Italian. It's a very unique dialect that a traditional Italian speaker would probably not understand.

Great video. Please do something similar with ancient European countries. Around 1900 there had been many German speaking places in Eastern Europe, many Greek and Armenian settlements in Anatolia. Many Polish regions in Belarus and Ukraine and so on.

7:54 For those interested: That map is available in much better quality in 2 similar versions on the website with the capital "R".

It's also important to remember that a country's borders will influence where the languages are spread. If the borders stand long enough, you will eventually have more of the common language closer to all corners, with only exceptions likely being officially recognized secondary languages that are protected.

The French map is incorrect as it ignores the Occitan language spoken in southern France and Norman in northern France. Sicilian and Sardinian are different enough from Italian to be its own language

Small correction: you said that French is also spoken in the Belgian province Wallonia. Wallonia is not a province but a region that itself consists of 5 provinces. :-)

Where is occitan?

the thing with Italy is that Friulan, Sardinian, Tirolese, Slovenian, Croatian, Ladin, Albanese, Occitan, Griko and Provençal are considered by the government as separate protected languages. All other languages (not dialects, as they developed before Italian, directly from Latin) don't have the same recognized protected status as those. Also most local languages come in hundreds of different variations, with a non-absolute level of intelligibility from one another, so if we were to count all of Italy's languages, it would take a lifetime, so for some it's easier to just group all of Italy under "Italian" and call local languages as "dialects" while neither classification is correct.

Finish, Estonian, and Hungarian (among (like the Sami-Languages) a lot of other languages nobody has ever heard about if they do not study linguistics or speak that language) are all part of the Uralic-Language-Family, probably names after the Uralin mountains in Russia, where the Proto-Language is though to come from. Those 3 are part of the so called Fino-Ugric group, with FInish and Estonian being grouped in the FInic group (do not know about Sami here). Hungary is to them what your cousins, who you see only at family reunions, are to you. The Uralic-Languages are in interesting bunch, because they orignated around the same time at as Indo-European, but only three of them have their own country (which is really sad, but most likely due to being close to the absolute maniacs that were the Indo-Europeans. Btw if you are woundering who those are, they basically conquered and killed everything from iceland to down to india and forced their languages onto everything there. Yes, Hindi is related to Icelandic. Indo (because India) and European (obvious reasoning) because most of what is on there and in between is of that family. Iranian, Albanian, Italo-Celtic, Germanic, Indo-Arya (actual name), Balto-Slavic, Hellenic (Greek), and what else the Lord in Heaven decided to create in this family are all related. AGAIN: ICELANDIC IS RELATED TO HINDI.

The Italian language is a compendium of the various languages ​​spoken in Italy. In this regard Dante wrote his work "De Vulgari Eloquentia".

5:08 I would point out that these "dialects" don't derive from the original Italian (Florentine) but they are derived either from an Italic common language group so they're technically languages and not dialects, especially Sardinian which is a language that originates mostly from Latin

My Portuguese bro :)

One thing the first map also diden`t caputre is, that in the in germany at the border to Denmark a danish speaking minority ( 50.000 people )exists. This minority even has it's own party: the "Südschleswigscher Wählerverband", which gained after the election last sunday and a new rule for minority parties one seat in the Bundestag.

In Italy there are neither "a thousand" languages or "one language". There are 15 languages in Italy if we exclude some linguistic islands. However, Italy is selective about recognizing languages - only the peripheral ones are recognised, while languages like Lombard, Venetian, Neapolitan ecc. are ignored.

What about Slovenian? Beside in Slovenia it is spoken in eastern Italy (it's on the Italy map in the video at 5:05 and you haven't mentioned it), in southern Austria and in the southwest of Hungary.

What constitutes a language is impossible to determine by simple rules. Two examples: The Scots of lowland Scotland speak English, but their "English" is closer to Scots spoken in the northeast than it is to Estuary English spoken in and around London. The people who live in and around Samedan, Switzerland speak German. The people who live in and around Hamburg, Germany speak German. The German immigrants who live in and around Steinbach, Manitoba speak German. All these Germans are mutually unintelligible when spoken but completely mutually intelligible on paper.

In a sea of Germanic, Slavic and Latin languages, you have the unique Hungarian language, right in the middle. Respect to Hungary for somehow keeping their language.

i’m italian and where I live if you travel 11 km you can find 4 languages (italian,pavese,lodigiano and barasino)

Wow, great video. This would be cool to see with east asia as well perhaps

I have a question for Germans, is sorbian still very present? I know the local dialects in Belgium, where I live, are slowly transforming into one and the same with only slight differences in pronounciation? Are sorbs able to keep their identity/language easily?

A basque speaker here, a language isolate. It is weird to see that you have forgotten the occitan language in France and in parts of Italy. A language that has even a literature nobel prize (Mistral).

Tere sulle ka 😊. Its nice to see real histori in toutube i thank u for what are u doing ✌

@6:30 oww that ... thats stalins doing...he loved "mixing people and borders" and the coast of besarbia was one of his special projects

Nobody speak German in France. Alsace-Lorraine used to have their own languages but they don't really exist anymore.

I love how people like to remind each other how different and unique we all are. It's not like we want unity and peace or anything.

Croatia, Serbia, and Bosnia speak the same language. Differences are so minor. There are greater differences in Slovenia, German, Italian, than is the difference between those three languages.

the netherlands also had lower-saxon which is a recognised language and a widely spoken 'dialect' on the entire German-Dutch border(also in germany)

Counting alsace lorraine as German is quite anachronistic. German had been heavily supressed for a long time and while most people learn it as a second language now, the majority of people speaks French as a first language.

Switzerland : i dont feel so good ...

I think this video simplified what a language is. There are a lot of cases where a recognized language might be less distinct than an unrecognized one. In Cases like Italy, Switzerland and Ukraine, the borders would look a lot different from a linguistic angle. Most often there wouldn’t be a clear border but more of a blurred line

Friaulian and ladin aren't dialects, but their own languages, which are in the same sub language group as romansh. They have nothing more in common with italian as any other romance language (such as sardinian)

Latin countrys is a bit complicated than this. If you give independance for Galicia, Catalunya and Rhaetian dialects, you should give independance to Asturias, Occitania, Arpitania, Corsica, Gallo-Italia, Veneto, Southeren Italy, Sardinia, Sicilia, and Aromania. And if you give independance for each separate dialects from rheto-romance language (friulian, ladin, & romansh), you should give independance for every dialects in France of langue d'oïl, every occitan dialects, every arpitan, gallo italic, napolitan and central italien dialects...

Overseas départements of France, which are part of France, in the Indian ocean, carribeans and south America, all have their own languages. Alsacien is its own language, occitan and Basque are making a big come-back, and Corsican is its own language too. Picard and Ch'timi aren't dead in the North either. The government called these "dialects" for a very long time to diminish their importance, but they're all languages on their own.

While this is an interesting train of thought, I feel like this idea started when you thought about how everyone in Portugal speeks portuguese and then thought: Spain has a lot of languages, what if they were its own countries. But this concept is way way broader than it was first thought. This would be a topic for an hour long video with way more depth. The result is that it has so many gaps and seems "badly" (or at least just superficially) researched.

The island of Gotland in Sweden has a dialect called Gutniska (Gutnish in English). It is officially seen as a dialect of Swedish but it can definitely be debated if it is a different language all together, because it's very different from Swedish

Northwestern germans feel culturally closer to dutch and danish people than to bavarians, no joke. As a child I felt just as at home in the netherlands as in germany. French and germans also have lots in common but you actually need to be able to speak each others languages.

I do live in a country with approximately 277 languages and dialects (or even more). Still, they are used mostly by ethnic minorities. What is peculiar for me is that the authors of the maps haven't highlighted the Manx language of The Isle of Man (even though Irish and Scottish Gaelic were shown). And the thing about the Gagauz people is that it is an ethnic group of Turkic origin who came from the Balkans and settled in modern day Moldavia and some other countries