United Nations recommends the Equal Earth world map

I am delighted that last week (4th September 2026) the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) has voted to change their world map from the Mercator projection (created in 1569) to the Equal Earth projection aimed at "a more accurate representation" of the world: https://news.un.org/en/story/2026/09/1168284

The UN Equal Earth projection is here: https://www.un.org/geospatial/content/map-world-1

Equal Earth projection adopted by the United Nations 

I have long advocated for using an equal earth projection of the world. In the Oxford Handbook of Speech Development in Languages of the World (McLeod, 2026) I had bespoke maps made for each chapter (language/dialect) using this projection - and an explanation and comparison with the Mercator projection is outlined in chapter 1.

Here is a map from my book showing the distribution of Afrikaans:

 

Indigenous languages across the world

I have recently learned about the following extremely informative map of indigenous languages across the world created by Native Land Digital, a Canadian not-for-profit organization.
https://native-land.ca/

Illustrations of the International Phonetic Association map

The International Phonetic Association publishes illustrations of the sounds of languages throughout the world. A map has been created documenting the breadth of analysis across the world: https://richardbeare.github.io/marijatabain/ipa_illustrations_all.html. The map enables people to find the IPA illustration journal article (green markers) as well as download the sound files for each language. It is a useful resource.

The linguistic landscape of our world's cities

Here are some linguistic maps of the languages spoken within different cities across the world

• Sydney: http://www.smh.com.au/data-point/sydney-languages/index.html
• London: http://mappinglondon.co.uk/2013/second-languages/