Geographical database of the Uralic languages

How to cite

When you use the datasets or maps, please also cite to the following paper introducing the whole of process from data collection, harmonization and visualization until releasing the data:

Rantanen, T., Tolvanen, H., Roose, M., Ylikoski, J. & Vesakoski, O. (2022) “Best practices for spatial language data harmonization, sharing and map creation - A case study of Uralic” PLoS ONE 17(6): e0269648. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0269648.

Overview

The Geographical database of the Uralic languages consists of past and current distributions of the Uralic languages both as the original digital spatial datasets and as finalized maps. The database has been collected by the interdisciplinary BEDLAN (Biological Evolution and Diversification of LANguages) research team in collaboration with experts of Uralic languages. The work has been financed by the University of Turku (UTU–BGG), Kone Foundation (UraLex, AikaSyyni), the Academy of Finland (URKO), UiT – The Arctic University of Norway and the University of Oulu, as well as the Finno-Ugrian Society. The data have been compiled for the purposes of doing spatial linguistic and multidisciplinary research, and to visually present the state-of-the-art knowledge of the Uralic languages and their dialects. Geographic distributions are visualized as vector data primarily by using polygon objects (speaker areas or language areas), and in some rare cases, by using points. Based on the language distributions, coordinates for the languages and their dialects (point locations) have also been defined.