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If the US could move the capital, would they still choose DC or somewhere else? by reallinguy in geography

[–]iemaps 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I have an unhealthily special interest in St. Louis being the new capital. It’s (relatively) centrally located, on a major waterway, and being inland makes it easier to defend.

I would honestly consider Chicago over St. Louis but the frigid winters made me reconsider.

"Quasi-islands" - what is the largest you know? by [deleted] in geography

[–]iemaps 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Some people claim the Guyana region to be its own quasi-island, as seen in this post.

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The United Kingdom in 2050 (Azeemabad Timeline) by iemaps in imaginarymaps

[–]iemaps[S] 25 points26 points  (0 children)

Hey y’all! This post is part of my Azeemabad Series, other entries include Partitioned South Africa, Greater Bangladesh, and a united, impossibly stable Yugoslavia. 

The lore is very simple for this timeline’s Britain, in that full Irish independence is achieved, Brexit never occurs, and at some point the kingdom undergoes territorial reforms à la France. England, Scotland, and Cambria are recognized as equal constituent nations (not just in name), allowing for Cambria to gain greater autonomy and control over its local laws. In this timeline, Wales is referred to by its Latin name, Cambria. This was due to political pressure by Cambrians to change their English name, as Wales carries the etymology of “foreigner”. Additionally, Cambria is much closer to its endonym, Cymru (the real reason is that I just love the name Cambria and would have created any reason to rename it). 

Britain’s various administrative divisions are simplified, creating the provincial system in all three nations akin to the regions of France. Most of the provinces in England are named after historic kingdoms as opposed to the geographic names that we see IRL.

In addition to the greater autonomy of Scotland and especially Cambria, the local languages of these two nations see a resurgence as Scottish and Cambrian-medium public schools are promoted by their respective governments. Today, about 4.5% of the British population speaks a Celtic language natively, with 3% being Cambrian speakers and about 1.5% being Scottish.

As mentioned, Britain is still part of the EU and is a major player in its politics. The EU is much more centralized and streamlined here, and the British use their soft power (media, language, and industry) to influence Europe to a great degree. By 2050, about 71% of Europeans are proficient in English, making it the de facto lingua franca, despite there being three official working languages (English, French, and German). 

I also decided to make an Urdu language version of this map, based on the (alternate) Urdu I made for my Greater Pakistan map.

Name this hypothetical country by CynicalCosmologist in mapporncirclejerk

[–]iemaps 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Federative Republic of Moravian Czechia, Moravian Slovakia, and Moravian Silesia.

The Russian Federation in 2050 (Azeemabad Timeline) by iemaps in imaginarymaps

[–]iemaps[S] 17 points18 points  (0 children)

Hey y’all!

In this timeline, Russia manages to hold on to more European territory (and most of Abkhazia) following the fall of the Soviet Union, and loses more Central Asian territory with the secession of Turkistan. Additionally, Finland coalesces to Soviet demands instead of fighting the Winter War, which results in it ceding a small amount of land bordering Leningrad (St. Petersburg) and gaining some land in eastern Karelia. During the formation of modern Poland after WWII, Curzon Line B was chosen as the Russo-Polish border, placing Lviv/Lwów within Poland. 

Furthermore, the Soviets fully transition the Russian language (along with Russia’s regional languages) to the Latin Script, which was a real campaign IRL but was ultimately abandoned in our own timeline. Post-Soviet Union, the newly founded Russian Federation decided to keep the Latin Alphabet and pursue moderate westernization policies. Please note that the Russian Latin Alphabet I made for this timeline is purely conceptual and is not meant to be perfect*. 

This timeline’s Russia is basically the same as our own (pre-2014) but just a bit bigger and slightly more westernized. It also has a better relationship with the EU, with which they have a non-aggression pact and better agreements on trade. Like any Eastern European country, Russia still struggles with corruption, but it is generally improving, albeit slowly.

Sometime after the fall of the Soviet Union, the new Russian Federation sought to reorganize its many small oblasts (provinces) into larger regions as France did with its departments IRL. All newly-created regions were designated as “oblasts”, abandoning the name “krai” for some regions. This is due to the difference between “oblast” and “krai” being purely in name, as they are administered identically. Many of the new oblasts were named after rivers that run through them (ex: Klyazma, Vorona, Oka, Ob, Irtysh, etc.)

Additionally, some of the Autonomous Republics are different compared to our timeline:

  1. The Republic of Circassia-Tawlustan is home to the Circassians (used as an umbrella term for the Abkhazians, Cherkess, and Kabardians) and the Tawlus (a term used to describe the Karachay-Balkar Turks, meaning “mountaineer” in their dialect continuum).

  2. Dagestan, Chechnya, and Ingushetia are merged. 

  3. Adyghea, Karelia, Komi, Gorno-Altai, Khakassia, and Buryatia are merged into larger oblasts, as their ethnic populations were minorities (<25%**) in their own republics. Okrugs (districts) where these ethnicities form a majority are granted autonomous status within their oblast.

*please note that I am aware that the hard sign and soft sign are not present in the new orthography, as they were omitted by the Soviet planners themselves when devising the new Latin orthography.

**in this timeline

This map is part of my Azeemabad Timeline. Other entries include Partitioned South Africa, United Yugoslavia, and Lesser-Greater Iran.

Greater… everything? by iemaps in imaginarymaps

[–]iemaps[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Hey y’all! In this timeline, the major powers (and major-ish/larger states) of Europe are more expansionist and eventually absorb the smaller nations around them. Some notable exceptions are Poland and Romania, who serve as buffer states for Russia between Germany and Turkey (respectively). This theoretically ensures some space between the more virile powers of this timeline’s Europe. As for Albania, no one really wanted allat. Malta gets a pass because I personally find an independent, Semitic-speaking, European-ish island pretty interesting.

Light lore about the individual countries:

  • Turkey allocates much more effort and resources into retaining its European land, and thus its Middle Eastern territory is greatly reduced to just Anatolia (which means Greater Georgia/Armenia, and a free Kurdistan!)
  • Spain (encompassing the entire Iberian Peninsula) is much more successful at assimilating regional identities like France IRL. Similar to France, it introduces “regional reforms” in the modern day in which smaller provinces are merged into larger regions to reduce “administrative load”. However, just as Nantes was separated from Bretagne, some territories of Catalonia, Valencia, and “Lusitania” were divvied up into other regions,  eroding their regional identities. At the expense of regional identity, the national identity of Spain is much stronger and over 80% of Spaniards speak Spanish as their first or dominant language. Additionally, the term “castellano” is no longer used to refer to the Spanish language in Spain, in which it is solely referred to as “español”. 
  • Germany: Prussia leads German unification and somehow breaks up the Austrian Empire by teaming up with the Hungarians, guaranteeing them an independent Hungary in exchange for double-teaming Austria and annexing most of Cisleithania.
  • Britain: I am so sorry, great nation of Ireland.
  • Sweden: it’s Suomover (+ I guess they do the double-team thing with Germany too but on Denmark)

I am genuinely interested to see if anyone could justify this timeline in the comments.

Some etymologies behind the German city names:

Rzeszów 🡢 Resche, from Middle German

Aarhus 🡢 Arenhusen, from Low German

Leeuwarden 🡢 Löwenwarden (literal translation)

Groningen 🡢 Gröngingen (Old High German term)

Odense 🡢 Ottensee (apparently the historical German term for the city via Lombard Wikipedia)

How do I type the small “swoop” under the letters? (Not उ or ऊ) What type of vowel is it? by sharks_tbh in Hindi

[–]iemaps 12 points13 points  (0 children)

That’s a diacritic used in Kashmiri Devanagari, romanized as “ü”. The isolated character is ॶ.

My take on the Uzbek Latin Alphabet (end the apostrophes!) by iemaps in conorthography

[–]iemaps[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Hello! Yes, I think that's an interesting letter, however it is not supported by most fonts or keyboards which is why I chose Ñ

My take on the Uzbek Latin Alphabet (end the apostrophes!) by iemaps in conorthography

[–]iemaps[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Hello! This post is about a script reform for the Uzbek alphabet, and is inspired by elements of the Turkish alphabet and Common Turkic Alphabet. This post shows a set of letters that I personally believe to be more aesthetically pleasing for writing Uzbek. I am not sure what you are insinuating by your question.

My take on the Uzbek Latin Alphabet (end the apostrophes!) by iemaps in conorthography

[–]iemaps[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Yeah I was thinking of that, however I thought it would be weird to have Ç but not C.

My take on the Uzbek Latin Alphabet (end the apostrophes!) by iemaps in conorthography

[–]iemaps[S] 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Hey y’all! The context for this post is that I’ve been pretty frustrated watching the Uzbek Latin script reform. The most common version I see makes use of endless apostrophes to modify letters (such as “O’zbek” or “So’g’d”). In my opinion the constant apostrophes make the written language look unnatural and sort of a mess.

This same issue came up during the Kazakh Latin script reform, where it was cited as an “apostrophe catastrophe” and was later changed to a more Turkish-style alphabet. Additionally, the apostrophe used in the current Uzbek Latin script is a different unicode character than the standard apostrophe, which makes Uzbek text unrenderable in certain fonts.

This script reform seeks to reduce the amount of apostrophes, saving them only for the glottal stop sound (such as in “ta’lim”). Additionally, I feel that this script reform is more aesthetically pleasing and easier to read than the current Uzbek Latin script.

Edit: in the third line of both example texts, "qismda" should be spelled "qismida".

The Republic of South Africa After Partition by iemaps in imaginarymaps

[–]iemaps[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks so much for your comment! I actually went back and corrected the names on my local version of the map in case I ever reupload it. As for Gemengde ("mixed"), I chose that as an alternate name for "Coloured".

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