this post was submitted on 26 Apr 2026
180 points (94.1% liked)
Map Enthusiasts
6120 readers
2 users here now
For the map enthused!
Rules:
-
post relevant content: interesting, informative, and/or pretty maps
-
be nice
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
A lot of these actually make a lot of sense. All of these countries make it incredibly hard to integrate into society as a foreigner either because of domestic policy or straight up the language barrier.
In the case of Tunisia, it’s the most liberal Arab country, which is remarkably close to France because of colonialism. Many Arabs wouldn’t want to move to such a place. I don’t think Tunisian Arabic would be the barrier there.
Polish is fucking difficult to pronounce with its 4 and 5 consonant clusters (if I had to guess, most languages max out at 3), and it’s not found anywhere else in the world because Poland didn’t colonize anywhere. They were lucky to get their own country if you look into their history.
Armenia is incredibly socially, religiously, and linguistically dissimilar to everywhere around it. Good luck wanting to move there; 2/3’s of ethnic Armenians live outside the country.
Egypt is the most surprising, because it was colonized and bothered by both the British and French, but it doesn’t have that diversity anymore?
Jordan is a theocratic strong monarchy. Makes sense that non-Jordanese wouldn’t move there.
Bangladeshi people were packed into the country with the partition of India. It’s super ethnically dissimilar to Burma and India. The partition really amplified that.
Poland has a certain... reputation...which is why they haven't got much racial diversity.
?
Perhaps you’re expecting all colonies to be plantations? The British plantations such as North America, Australia and NZ are still as you’d expect. But most of the empire was run for profit rather than plantation. These colonies were administered by British (later a mix of British and indigenous) civil servants and garrisons but there was no intention to build a lasting presence. The British Empire even told itself it would hand back the non-plantations after they had been “set right” for the benefit of the natives.
The point I’m getting at with colonial powers was that English/French was forced onto the locals in one way or the other. Also, British/French citizens moved to the colonies and maintained a permanent presence there, which had lasting impact all over the world.
They didn’t tend to move permanently unless it was a plantation, they were there for a job and moved back after.
what 4 or 5 consonant clusters?
I know Czech language has them, but I'm aside from diphtongues I'm not sure polish reaches 3 consonants in a row
Only one 4 consonant cluster that comes to my mind is szcz, but it's not actually 4 but 2, since both sz and cz are diphthongs making one sound.
I don’t speak Polish, but I learned about the language in linguistics at some point.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_phonology
There is no information about clusters of consonants that I can find in that article with the amount of effort I want to put in for the online discussion