Looking Outwards-01

https://wals.info/feature/1A#2/19.3/152.9

A computational project that I admire is the WALS database. It uses GeoJSON and a lot of linguistic data to compile an interactive map where you are able to see languages plotted on said map. I use this website almost daily to look up different features of languages and compare them to other languages around the world, and I am constantly in awe with how much information they have readily available about thousands of languages. As far as I know, the software for this project utilized existing libraries; however, I am not positive about this. The way this map was designed feels very influenced by paper maps and the experience of physically putting pins on them to note a location. Something that I appreciate is that their code is open source, so anyone can go in there and utilize what they have. This website is an extensive resource for any linguist, but I also think it has the opportunity to be even better. This map interaction is functional, but not the best design-wise. I’ve spent many hours thinking through ways to make this map even better (and I even tried it for a term project!), and I would love to learn more about GeoJSON to make this happen.

Dryer, Matthew S. & Haspelmath, Martin (eds.) 2013.
The World Atlas of Language Structures Online.
Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
(Available online at http://wals.info, Accessed on 2020-09-06.)