Starkey Comics
starkeycomics.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2019
Starkey Comics is a personal site with illustrated maps and essays on languages, dialects, geography, and history in Britain and Europe.
What HN saysCommenters find the language and dialect maps interesting, and one links the Alabama coastline and election post, though another objects to the site's other content.
18HN people shared it
8linked it in comments
10stories submitted
356story points
2 years agolast shared
2019people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1The ABCD Family Tree4 people · 3 points · first shared 2021 · 1 comments on HN
- 2A coastline 100M years ago influences modern election results in Alabama4 people · 2 points · first shared 2022 · discussion on HN
- 3Every native british and irish language2 people · first shared 2025
- 4A Map of British Dialects (2023)1 people · 221 points · first shared 2025 · 178 comments on HN
- 5Bifurcation: The secret giant islands formed when rivers split1 people · 118 points · first shared 2025 · 35 comments on HN
- 6Indo-European Words for 'Name'1 people · 6 points · first shared 2024 · 2 comments on HN
- 7A Brief History of British and Irish Languages1 people · 2 points · first shared 2019 · discussion on HN
- 8Fantastic False Cognates1 people · 2 points · first shared 2019 · discussion on HN
- 9Indo-European Words for Two1 people · 1 points · first shared 2019 · discussion on HN
- 10Starkey Comics1 people · 1 points · first shared 2024 · discussion on HN
- 11Eight british and irish accent maps1 people · first shared 2025
What HN people wrote when they linked it
Ichthypresbyter · 2025-04-20
>Posh = not from round here.
Perhaps the best example of that is that, as one of the linked maps [0] says, both British people who rhyme "scone" with "gone" and those who rhyme it with "alone" think that the other pronunciation is the "posh" one.
[0]https://starkeycomics.com/2024/05/10/eight-british-and-irish-accent-ma…
jetrink · 2025-02-26
The article that follows that one is also very interesting and worth reading. It shows how a coastline that existed 100 million years ago and cut through modern day Alabama is still visible in demographic and election maps. (By a crazy coincidence, I just dug up that article and sent it to someone not even half an hour ago, since we were talking about geology and I remembered reading it. Then I go to HN and see this posted.)
1. https://starkeycomics.com/2021/06/11/how-a-coastline-100-million-years…
AndrewDucker · 2023-06-22
Taken from https://starkeycomics.com/2018/12/11/the-abcd-family-tree/
Which is a site that doesn't also spread conspiracy theories. Might be worth changing the link.
michae4 · 2023-06-02
that route follows an ancient coastline - https://starkeycomics.com/2021/06/11/how-a-coastline-100-million-years…
dfawcus · 2025-04-19
Not 'virtually', Scots is a different language to English, and Doric is a dialect of Scots.
English and Scots are sibling languages, c.f. some of the geographically close Scandinavian languages.
If you want a quick guide to languages in Britain, the site has an additional article which the original links to:
https://starkeycomics.com/2019/03/01/every-native-british-and-irish-la…
nkurz · 2025-04-19
The article has a section "Why Scots/Doric are not included" that covers this: "This map is specifically of the English language, and Scots (and its subset, Doric), are not English." It then links to another article that discusses Doric: https://starkeycomics.com/2019/03/01/every-native-british-and-irish-la…
Apocryphon · 2023-01-27
The conclusion of this, geography shaping destiny, very much reminds me of this image that's been making the rounds this month:
"How a coastline 100 million years ago influences modern election results in Alabama"
https://starkeycomics.com/2021/06/11/how-a-coastline-100-million-years…
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34186005
Looks like Wired magazine did a similar piece back in 2017.
https://www.wired.com/story/alabama-election-results-voting-patterns/
Geology shapes agriculture shapes social patterns shapes politics.
lovecg · 2021-01-12
I enjoyed this visualization https://starkeycomics.com/2018/12/11/the-abcd-family-tree/
Not all connections are super well established, but a lot of them are. It really drives home the point that writing was invented independently only a handful of times. The letters you’re currently reading are direct descendants of Egyptian hieroglyphs!