Analysts from University College London have published a map showing language clusters in London based on Twitter use after gathering more than three million tweets sent with a GPS location attached and then analysing them using Google's translation tools.
The map shows has shown nine out of the total 66 different languages used in the capital, with 92.5 per cent of tweets being written in English.
Spanish, represented by the white clusters, was found to be the second most common language, followed by French (red), Turkish (blue), Arabic (green) and Portuguese (purple).Dr James Cheshire, lecturer at UCL and one of the head researchers said: "Towards the north, more Turkish tweets appear, Arabic tweets are most common around Edgware Road and there are pockets of Russian tweets (pink) in parts of central London."The geography of the French tweets is perhaps most surprising as they appear to exist in high density pockets around the centre and don’t stand out in South Kensington (an area with the Institut Francais, a French High School and the French Embassy)."
Dr Cheshire went on to explain in his blog that other languages such as Basque, Haitian Creole and even Swahili were found. Some tweets also had to be excluded as many simply included the use of English terms such as 'hahahahaha', 'ahhhhhhh' and 'lololololol'.Since the data was gathered over the summer, Dr Cheshire added: "we can clearly see the many languages of the Olympic Park"
