Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2018 November 16

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November 16

Geography + language

When it comes to this map ([1]), is there any way to know which subsaharan language on the above map has the largest geographic distribution? If so, are there any citations corroborating this? At first glance, Somali looks the largest, but I'm not sure. HUZIXIISD (talk) 04:41, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

There are ways to calculate the areas covered by those different colored splotches, but the greater question is "do those colored splotches represent what you think they do, or what they purport to". For example, when defining "geographic distribution", how do you define if an "area" speaks a "language"? Do you mean the people who live in an area? What defines such an area? What about areas with multiple languages spoken in an interspersed area? There are places on that map that are essentially unpopulated; no one lives there. Why are those colored in? How can they "speak a language" if there is no one there to speak it? A much better map would be a heat map that shows each language, displaying both the location of the speakers and the number of speakers there. --Jayron32 17:52, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

Country of largest area with only 1 time zone

Between the countries that are at only one time zone (and that they are at the time zone they should be, unlike as some example greenland that is at 5 time zones but all those areas to a single one, -3) what is the country with biggest area?201.9.248.95 (talk) 15:52, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

Cross referencing List_of_time_zones_by_country with List of countries and dependencies by area yields India which only has one time zone as the winner. I don't know if that fits your "at the time zone they should be" criteria though. EniaNey 16:06, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

China is the 3rd/4th largest country in the world by area (depending on how you define "area" and "largest" and "china"), and all of the larger countries (The U.S., Canada, and Russia) have multiple time zones, whereas all of China is at UTC+08:00. So the answer to the question "What is the largest single time zone country in the world" is "China" --Jayron32 16:08, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

yes... If the question is “What is the largest country to have one single time zone?, then the answer is China. If the question is “What is the largest country with all of its area falling within a single time zone... without ignoring the time zoning of surrounding nations... I think the answer is Algeria. Blueboar (talk) 16:24, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

Well, it depends on what you mean by "should be". There is no Time Zone Authority that mandates time zones, every sovereign state sets its own clocks however the heck it wants to. So there is no "rule" to "ignore.", so there is no "should be" If, in defining "time zone", we just mean "the 15 degree slice of the Earth whose international waters are defined as at a certain time zone", For ANY country which is wider than 15 degrees longitude, it would be impossible to meet the definition the OP laid out. It would also be impossible for countries smaller than 15 degrees longitude which were offset enough to bridge two of those 15 degree zones (since that country would have part of its territory outside of the defined 15 degree "time zone"). That leaves us with some pretty small countries. If the OP's arcane definition can be defined to mean "largest country wholly within the defined 15 degree slices of the earth that nominally define the Time Zones", then Algeria doesn't work either; it crosses between the UTC 0 and UTC +1 time zone bands, and actually lies mostly in the WRONG band (Algeria sets its time to UTC +1, but most of its territory is in the UTC 0 band, see map at List of UTC time offsets). Given what I think is the new criteria, and eyeballing the map in the above article, I think the largest single-time-zone country wholly within the correct colored band (that is, unlike the Greenland example the OP used as a disqualifier) on that map is Zimbabwe, which is wholly within the correct band, (UTC +2). All other countries which are larger seem to "cross" multiple bands. --Jayron32 17:12, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

The question "largest country wholly within the defined 15 degree slices of the earth that nominally define the Time Zones", is the real question I wanted to ask. Sorry if I wanst precise enought.201.9.248.95 (talk) 18:40, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

Cool. In that case, I think "Zimbabwe" is the right answer. It's a question, however, that maybe doesn't have a lot of significance. Because the time zones taper to nothing at the poles, that raises the problem that countries in the higher latitudes are basically screwed by compared to those near the equator. Greenland, for example, is about 1100 kilometers across. At the equator, a degree is about 111 kilometers. 111*15 = 1665 km, a space Greenland could COMFORTABLY fit in. The only reason it crosses 5 time zones is that at it's northerly location, the size of a degree of longitude at 77 degrees latitude (about the widest part of Greenland) is only about 25 kilometers across, or less than 1/5 the size of at the equator or exactly why Greenland crosses 5 time zones. See here for calculations regarding the size of a degree of longitude. --Jayron32 19:07, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

I'm not entirely sure whether the OP's clarification is completely clear. There's no reason a time zone has to be in hourly offset, and while most are, not every extant timezone is an hourly offset. While I personally think non hour offsets are crazy, I'm not sure you can say they're more natural or correct. Even for historic time zones with very odd offsets like Bombay Time. So when you say 15 degrees, do you also mean only hourly offsets (or discrete 15 degree arcs), or the extant time zones (so including the non hour offsets that currently exist, but not the ones that don't). Or do you mean any 15 degree slice of earth, recognising that there are theoretically a very large number of timezones (Planck time or Planck length) and a country could if they wanted to, use some weird offset and really be no different from whatever country you find who uses a hour offset? I think the former 2 are currently the same and the answer is Zimbabwe, but if I understand correctly the third is Algeria and the second could change to that at any time. Nil Einne (talk) 17:47, 17 November 2018 (UTC)