Lexical Distance Among the Languages of Europe
Posted by Teresa Elms on 4 March 2008
This chart shows the lexical distance — that is, the degree of overall vocabulary divergence — among the major languages of Europe.
The size of each circle represents the number of speakers for that language. Circles of the same color belong to the same language group. All the groups except for Finno-Ugric (in yellow) are in turn members of the Indo-European language family.
English is a member of the Germanic group (blue) within the Indo-European family. But thanks to 1066, William of Normandy, and all that, about 75% of the modern English vocabulary comes from French and Latin (ie the Romance languages, in orange) rather than Germanic sources. As a result, English (a Germanic language) and French (a Romance language) are actually closer to each other in lexical terms than Romanian (a Romance language) and French.
So why is English still considered a Germanic language? Two reasons. First, the most frequently used 80% of English words come from Germanic sources, not Latinate sources. Those famous Anglo-Saxon monosyllables live on! Second, the syntax of English, although much simplified from its Old English origins, remains recognizably Germanic. The Norman conquest added French vocabulary to the language, and through pidginization it arguably stripped out some Germanic grammar, but it did not ADD French grammar.
The original research data for the chart comes from K. Tyshchenko (1999), Metatheory of Linguistics. (Published in Ukrainian.)
European Languages « Wintry Smile said
[…] This is a damn cool map of distances between European languages as measured by the commonality of their vocabulary. It also confirms my sense that German is a […]
Louis Janus said
I understand this posting is from 2008 and I don’t expect any more recent comments…. but
I want to develop a way to measure distance among and between languages / dialects, showing numerically that, for example the dialect in Oslo is closer to the dialect in Tromsø than the dialect in Bergen. I would want to take into consideration not only lexical items, but morphology, phonetics, (and sub- super-phonemic phenomena like tones.
It will be complex, I know, but any help or ideas is appreciated!
Louis Janus
janus005@umn.edu
Kjetil Rå Hauge said
That is a tall order, but you might begin with this article: Peter Houtzagers , John Nerbonne & Jelena Prokić (2010) “Quantitative and Traditional Classifications of Bulgarian Dialects Compared”, Scando-Slavica, 56:2, 163-188 (the U. of Minnesota library ought to have it [men i nødsfall: mail meg]), where “Levenshtein distances” between modern Bulgarian dialects within the Republic of Bulgaria are measured, mainly on criteria of diachronic phonetic/phonemic development, rather than on lexical correspondences (which may be due to borrowing and may be more or less masked by phonetic and semantic developments in the receiving language). Let me also quote a few more sources from the references of that article:
Heeringa, W. 2004. Measuring Dialect Pronunciation Differences using Levenshtein Distance. Groningen: PhD thesis, University of Groningen. Available at http:// irs.ub.rug.nl/ppn/258438452.
Nerbonne, J. and W. J. Heeringa. 2010. “Measuring Dialect Differences”. In P. Auer and J.E. Schmidt (eds.), Language and Space. An International Handbook of Linguistic Variation. Vol. 1: Theories and Methods, Berlin/New York: de Gruyter/ Mouton, 550–567.
Nerbonne, J. and W. Kretzschmar (eds.). 2006. Progress in Dialectometry. Special issue of Literary and Linguistic Computing 21(4).
Prokić,J.andJ.Nerbonne.2009.“RecognizingGroupsamongDialects”.International Journal of Humanities and Arts Computing, Special Issue on Language Variation, edited by John Nerbonne, Charlotte Gooskens, Sebastian Kurschner, and Renée van Bezooijen.
Prokić, J., J. Nerbonne, V. Zhobov, P. Osenova, K. Simov, T. Zastrow, and E. Hinrichs. 2009. “The Computational Analysis of Bulgarian Dialect Pronunciation”. Serdica Journal of Computing 3 (3): 269–298.
Lykke til!
Louis Janus said
hei og takk Kjetil Rå Hauge. I will get some of the suggested resources and read them. Aldi hadde jeg håpet at noen skulle besvare mitt spørsmål… men jeg setter pris på det.
DMQ said
Looking at the closeness between English & French perhaps gives insight to your leanings towards being slightly Romantic? (D)
Colette said
Despite the fact that Englih has a German origin, 29% of modern English words come from Latin and the same percentage come from French. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Origins_of_English_PieChart.svg
Manuel Herranz said
Well, coming from Latin and coming from French sounds like 60% Romance language?
I favour the view of English as a hybrid language
88costa said
I agree with Colette. The chart is a blunt instrument. The language groups (e.g. Romance) should be in a circle, and the links between groups would make sense. As it is, French is shown as related to Greek, but Italian is not. There should be an average of the relationship of all sub-langauges with another language (or language group) and use that. Otherwise, it should be language-by-language. Also, it shows Albanian as related to Slovak, when it means to show that Alb is related to Slavic. In that case though, it should be shown as related to Bulgarian and Serbian, because it has weak statistical links to Slavic , as a group.
Gary Rickard said
@88costa: I believe the chart is showing Albanian as connected to Slovene, not Slovak.
Xavier Alfonseca said
@Manuel Herranz
Lexically. But everywhere else in the language, it’s clearly not a hybrid. It just happens to be a very distant language.
Besides, look at French’s pronunciation, which is extremely different from the other Romance languages. If anything, French is very distant, and doesn’t really represent being a Romance language.
Andreas Melichar said
I would see a connection between German and western slavic languages, since they lived close to each other: Austrian Hungarian,…
Marius said
Geographic neighborhood is irrelevant. E.g. hungarians and romanians live close together for more than 1000 years, have some regional linvgistic exchanges but are still totally unrelated.
Tapio Nurminen said
Very interesting. There could be more variation to the size of the circles: now a language with 100 million speakers has a circle that’s just slightly bigger than language with 5 million speakers. But, overall, very fascinating with interesting analysis. There certainly is a very strong connection between English and French.
Matt said
Very interesting! BTW, is there a key for the language abbreviations used in the graph? Most are self-explanatory, but there are a few that aren’t obvious (Rm, Pro, Sr).
Paul Held said
(RM) Romanian, (PRO) Provencal, guessing from the proximity to Polish that SR is Sorbian.
astheart said
Well, I would say you are wrong, sorry. I have no idea what the author meant by Sr, but there is no language like Sorbian; you can find Serbian (SRB), but it is far from Polish. Moreover, I am a language teacher who grew up and lives on Czech-Polish border, so I can speak both languages very well. I can assure you that there is no language between them. Czech and Polish are very close, but Czech and Slovak are even closer; they are so close that any Czechs and Slovaks don’t need any interpretors, and the can speak their mother languages during conversations without any problems. Still, they are different languages. I think something like Sorbian doesn’t exist, anyway, and Longman Dictionary doesn’t know such an expression. 🙂
astheart said
Sorry, missed a letter: …. they can speak their mother ….
carson said
the sorbs(sp) live ont eh board to germany and poland or germany and the czech republic. They do have there own language. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorbian_languages
pjt said
Astheart, what do you mean ” there is no language like Sorbian”?
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorbian_languages and think why ISO 639-2 has code wen.
Or do you actually say this in the meaning of the English phrase “there is no language like Sorbian”, i.e. Sorbian is the best of languages?
Karel said
Astheart, Sorbian is what we call Lužická srbština in Czech, it is correctly placed in the diagram. A language (actually two slightly different languages) nearly died out but still spoken by a few thousands people in Saxony around Bautzen/Budyšin. It is a nice language that Czechs and Poles also understand well, and it is not much further from Czech than Slovak. We are used to understand Slovak and often understand Polish, yet most Czechs probably never heard Sorbian. I only read a few texts in it and I understand most of the words.
astheart said
If you had read all comments of mine, you would know I have found out what Sorbian is. Still, I don’t agree it is placed correctly as I heard it and was lost, :). I usually don’t have any troubles with languages that are close to Czech. I keep my opinion that Polish is much closer since I can speak Polish and I learnt it just by listening to it very often during my childhood ( I grew up in Silesia.), 🙂 .
ddh74 said
“Rm” probably is Romansh, which is spoken in Switzerland; “PRO,” Provençal; and “Sr” is probably Sorbian.
Barna said
rethoroman (Rm) in Swiss, provancal (Pro) in South-France, sorb in South-East-Germany.
Gerard M said
GerardM
Matt, I guess Rm means Latin (Roman), PRO would mean Provençal, I don’t know about SRD but it should be something close to Italian
CAT should be Catalan
GLC should be Galician.
Giovanni Cappellini said
SRD = “Sardinian language – Sardinian (Sardu, Limba Sarda) is the collective name of the vernacular linguistic varieties spoken in most of the island of Sardinia, Italy.”
Joe said
SRD is probably a language of Sardenia.
astheart said
@Pjt : Sorry I confused you. I had never heard about Sorbian before I wrote that comment, and couldn’t find any information. I mean I didn’t know that expression. 🙂 Then I found some, and I wrote it in my later comments. Now I know what is meant by Sorbian; in my language it is lužická srbština. Still, I keep my opinion that language (if it really is a language, not only a dialect – I am not sure) cannot be put between Czech and Polish as it is totally wrong. I am Czech and I live on Czech-Polish border. I have no troubles with Polish, but when I hear Sorbian/lužická srbština, I have terrible troubles with understanding. Also, Silesian is not a language, it is just a dialect (I can speak it as well.); it changes from a place to place, has not any written code, and no other signs of language. Somebody wrote here that Silesian is Germanic… Well, it cannot be at all (and frankly, it makes me smile). Silesian is a dialect with expressions taken from Czech and Polish, and its “grammar” (It cannot be called grammar in fact) is the mixture of those languages, not similar a bit to German. Though, there are some expressions of German origin, but it’s because of the existence of former Austro-Hungarian Empire. Silesian hasn’t got its written form as well. 🙂
mirime said
As I said before Sorbian belongs to western slavic language group and in history the country Lužice was the part of the Czech kingdom till 1814.In some parts of German Sorbian is official language and it is taught at schools.
david said
@astheart:
Your argument is wrong, I believe.
The reason you understand Czech and Polish well is because you are familiar with those languages as they are both spoken in Český Těšín, or Třinec, or wherever you live. Your argument would be valid if you spoke Czech, had no prior exposure to Polish whatsoever and then encountered both Polish and Sorbian and could understand Polish better (also, this talks about vocabulary only and not about grammar).
I had no idea what Sorbian is either…
Katinka said
“Somebody wrote here that Silesian is Germanic… Well, it cannot be at all (and frankly, it makes me smile)”
The term “Silesian” refers to two different language varieties:
1) a dialect of the German language that used to be spoken in Silesia. Due to the expulsion of almost the entire German population of Silesia after the Second World War and their subsequent resettlement in various parts of today’s Germany, this dialect is almost extinct. It’s only spoken by very few and very old people.
2.) a variety of the Polish language with some German influence, which is still spoken in the Silesian region of Poland today.
“because of the existence of former Austro-Hungarian Empire”
– Silesia belonged to the Austrian-Hungarian Empire only until the mid-18th century. Then it became a part of Prussia and, after the foundation of a united Germany in 1871, was a part of Germany until 1945 (except for some parts of Upper Silesia, which were granted to the newly established Polish State after WW1). Lower Silesia used to be almost exclusively German-speaking; Upper Silesia had a mixed population of German and Polish speakers. After the Second World War, the entire territory was given to Poland and, after the expulsion of the Germans, resettled with Poles, many of whom had themselves been expelled from Eastern Poland by the Soviets.
astheart said
David, sorry, but I don’t think I am wrong. My view is not based just on my place of living. I am an educated linguist, and I am sure I know what I am talking about. Your opinion is different; okay then, but it doesn’t mean you’re right. I can speak several languages on a decent level, and because of my linguistic education I can see relations among them deeper than somebody who just grew up in Silesia. (It is neither Třinec, nor Český Těšín, 🙂 )
astheart said
Mirime, from the Middle Ages the ownership of Lužice changed many times, and there were some periods when it was ruled by the Czech King. (Anyway, there were times when the Czech Kingdom was much bigger than Czechia is now, and also some Czech Kings were Holy Roman Emperors.) But, in 1632 it was given to the Czech Kingdom as a Saxon pledge, and in fact, it was only a formal act. Czech Kings respected it because of the Catholic religion of its inhabitants, and that is also the reason, why Sorbians weren’t assimilated and their language survived. This is the only thing they have common with Czechs; no common history, no common culture.
mirime said
As an educated linguist to other educated linguist I only want to say that if you compare basic vocabulary you can see that Sorbian as a language is in the same language group and it relates to Czech, Polish and Slovak.It was my basic thought. And if you look at historical or linguistic maps you can see that the land inhabited by Sorbians wasn´t insignificant in past.
On the grounds of your incomprehension of language you can´t say what you said.It isn´t scientific approach.
mirime said
Only some interesting details:http://vlast.cz/luzice/ 🙂
mirime said
And last thing do you really think that almost 260 years common history didn´t influenced both nations?Maybe you can explain me why Sorbians tried to connect to our country everytime when the real possiblity appeared (after WWI or WWII) if we didn´t have something in common.
To sum up from the point of view of history and linguistics Czechs and Sorbians are much closer to each other than you assumed.
Soft Accent said
Rm is most likely Romantsch (or Rheto-Roman), while Romanian is abbreviated as ROM.
Vato said
Would be nice to see how distanced Georgian, Armenian and Turkish languages are from all the rest of these European languages.
Observer said
Armenian is at least an Indo-European language, but is missing on the chart.
Aleks said
Sorry but is no Turkish language, Pseudo-Turkish language is a mix of Mongolian root, mixed with : Arabic, Persian, Assyrian,Greek and Albanian.
Martin said
it has no european roots at all, it comes from the caucas region so is influenced by arabic languages to the south …
Karl said
Actually, Armenian is not much influenced by the arabic languages. It’s an indo-european language whose roots are in the Persian Highlands, like the other indo-european languages, which spread from Persia to Europe since about 2000-1500 BC, nearly totally wiping out the ancient european languages with the exception of the Basque language. Persian itself is also an indo-european language. Armenian is thus much closer to English than to Arabic.
Virginia (@sk8sbd) said
Nice! It would be greeat, though, to have a legend that explains what the names of the different languages are. I can’t, for the life of me, guess a language that’s somewhere between Spanish and French that could be called “Pro”. Or the Srd…
Ah Leum Kwon said
Provençal / Sardinian 🙂
alexander said
PRO = ??
SRD : Sardinian
Keith O Brien said
PRO- Provencal
Fernando said
Provençal and Sardo.
Gerard M said
Virginia,
I guess PRO could mean Provençal, I don’t know about SRD but it should be something very close to Italian
Rm means Latin (Roman),
CAT should be Catalan
GLC should be Galician.
Gerard M said
Pls erase my post above as I didn’t see Virginia worked ouy meanings.
Sorry
Virginia (@sk8sbd) said
Oooooh, yeah, just figured it out! Provençal and Sardinian, isn’t it? Still, it would have benn better if I could have found it in the capture… Anyway, very cool graph!
Andris said
Reblogged this on Tā dzīvojam. Ikšķilē. Latvijā..
Distanța lexicală dintre limbile din Europa | TOTB.ro - Think Outside the Box said
[…] Sursa: elms.wordpress.com […]
DanielR said
Romanian has more loanwords from Hungarian and Turkish than from Albanian, but the graph doesn’t show that
Barna said
because of the trakian – illirian relationship! 😛 not dacian- roman!!! 😉
Aleks said
If you see carefully Romanians , and Albanians look alike.
Gabriela said
It has actually very few words from Hungarian. Of course, it has from Turkisch, Slavonian and French a great deal. But we share a lion’s share of our ACTIVE vocabulary with Albanians through thraciana –> Dacians, thracians – Illarians. There will be yet a lot to be discovered. Future genetics research will reveal it.
kalot said
And the distance between the romanian and hungarian?
Barna said
it is correct! I don’t know rumanian words in Hungarian languages, may be oláh <— vlach (earlier name of Rumanian nation).
Daniel said
Just about accurate in the image above. There are some loanwords but they aren’t even close otherwise.
Tineaux said
Basque?
Richard Hammitt said
Like the Finno-Ugric languages, Basque isn’t Indo-European.
Omar said
Reblogged this on Blogging to discover and commented:
Lexical Distance Among the Languages of Europe
Kasia said
What country is this between Polish and Czech?
alexander said
No Country but language : Sorbian
Language Bandit said
It probably refers to the Sorbian languages, spoken in in the Lusatia region of eastern Germany.
Marek said
I can´t find out either. Śląsk – the only possibility. But is there any specific language? Dialect, I suppose. However, it can not be closer than Czech and Slovak.
astheart said
Agreed. I don’t think some language could be between Czech and Polish. I have just found out what Sorbian is, which I didn’t know when I was writing my previous comment. But, I am persuaded Sorbian is spoken by a very small group of people, and it is nearly dead. Anyway, then Sorbian is close to Serbian, but not between Czech and Polish, no way. Moreover, being Czech I can say I don’t understand Sorbian at all, but I understand Polish without any problems. 🙂
Karel said
Astheart, the Upper Lusitanian Sorbian is closer to Czech while Lower Lusitanian Sorbian is closer to Polish. Some words in ULS are closer to Czech than some Slovak words, some not, but you would understand perfectly if you heard the language as often as Slovak.
Marek said
Łużyce (język serbsko-łużycki, po niemiecku Sorbisch)
Festus Dirk Festerling said
maybe Sorbic, a minority in germany close to the polish and czech borders.
astheart said
Not close to Czech borders. It could be the language of Sorbs, a little group of nearly assimilated minority in Germany close to Polish border.
mirime said
But the country Lužice where people spoke Sorbian was part of the Czech kingdom till 1814. And Sorbian belongs to western slavic language group like Czech, Slovak and Polish.And if you compare words you can see similarities like večer(czech)- wječor/wjacor(sorbian) – wieczór(polish) – večer(slovak) or sníh-sněg/sněh-śnieg-sneh…
ddh74 said
Not a country–a language, Sorbian.
Barna said
no country just a little nation, perhabs sorbs (wends)… ?????
Fernando said
It’s not countries but languages. Silesian is the asnwer.
astheart said
Silesian is a dialect spoken in the region I live in. It cannot be called a language, and it is not Sorbian for sure.
AKMA said
I wonder where Basque fits into the picture….
Karl said
It doesn’t. Basque doesn’t fit any picture. It’s a language on its own, not related to any other living language.
Gabriela said
Basque should be separate since it is the language of Iberians, at the time in Europe there was Latin as well, but we do not see it either. Basque should be there, Latin in exchange vanished.
Ada said
Like a lot the idea of building such a map. 2 questions: 1) what is exactly “vocabulary divergence”? 2) If I understood corectly “vocabulary divergence” then there should be more links between Greek and oth languages. What about Romanian and Slavic languages? As far as I know at least 30% of Romanian words are Slavic. Thanks!
ME said
Divergence means moving apart: the process of separating or moving apart to follow different paths or different courses. So it means the how languages evolved. and europians love to conquer, historically, and their language mixed with others.
Hristian Carabulea said
I think 30% or Romanian words having Slavic origin is a bit too much. Wikipedia suggests around 20%: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_language#Slavic_languages.
Basque said
When you say “Among the Languages of Europe” you mean “Among the Languages of Europe”, isn’t it? I can’t see the basque language in the chart…
Basque said
Sorry, I correct:
When you say “Among the Languages of Europe” you mean “Among SOME OF the Languages of Europe”
Pilar said
Pay attention to the text: she said “among the MAJOR languages of Europe” [in number of speakers, I suppose]. Furthermore, Basque do not belongs to Indo-European language family (like Finno-Ugric group – represented, in the diagram, by three different languages).
infallible and modest said
Well, it says “major” languages, and Basque certainly is majorer than most of the Celtic languages that are listed, for example.
Bittor said
Basque has around a milion of speakers!
Rick said
Fascinating chart, very nicely done. Question: why did you name the Latin language group ‘Romance’? I mean, if you’re referring to the Roman roots of these languages, the “ce”-affix still seems superfluous and unintentionally indicative of a style-period in art history.
Daniel said
Because that’s what it’s called: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_languages
Jakob said
This is the conventional way of referring to the descendants of Latin. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_languages.
Séa said
Because that is the correct technical term.
I once was looking at an email of French colleague and it said “recieved at 11.15 Romance time”. I had never encountered the term with that usage before. A quick scan of wikipedia shows multiple entries….
Speaking of wikipedia:
“The term “Romance” comes from the Vulgar Latin adverb romanice, derived from Romanicus: for instance, in the expression romanice loqui, “to speak in Roman” (that is, the Latin vernacular), contrasted with latine loqui, “to speak in Latin” (Medieval Latin, the conservative version of the language used in writing and formal contexts or as a lingua franca), and with barbarice loqui, “to speak in Barbarian” (the non-Latin languages of the peoples living outside the Roman Empire). From this adverb the noun romance originated, which applied initially to anything written romanice, or “in the Roman vernacular”.
The word romance with the modern sense of romance novel or love affair has the same origin. In the medieval literature of Western Europe, serious writing was usually in Latin, while popular tales, often focusing on love, were composed in the vernacular and came to be called “romances”.”
tada
Tom said
That’s the standard broadly-accepted, traditional name for the Latin-origin language group. This sense of the term has the same origin, and is older than, the other sense to which you refer. While Wikipedia is never an authoritative source, their writeup on the topic isn’t bad: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_languages#History and of course following their footnotes is a good idea.
Fernando said
It is the scientific name for that language group.
swdevperestroika said
Reblogged this on systems perestroika – éminence grise.
Nico Sallembien (@nsallembien) said
Where are Corsican and Basque?
EnferEvidente said
Where is the Basque language?
Mykola said
I met Kostyantyn Tyshchenko
in 2004, then in 2007 years. It was very interesting to be on his lecture. Also I love his humor. Real scientist.
Stefan Buttigieg said
….and where is Malta’s native language : Maltese 🙂 ?
Justin Birchell said
I wish there was a key showing what the abbreviations stand for. Most of them I can guess, but, for instance, I do not know what Germanic language is “Fri” or “Bok”…am I ignorant?
Jakob said
Frisian and Norwegian Bokmål:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisian_languages
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokm%C3%A5l
alexander said
BOK = ??
FRI = probably Friesian (Frisian)
Hakiyetu said
Frisian and Bokmål.
Richard Hammitt said
Frisian? I have no idea what Bok is, though.
Festus Dirk Festerling said
Fri frisian, northern dutch and northwestern german “minority”, BOK norwegian bokmal?
Jock Coats (@jockox3) said
Friesian? And Norwegian Bokmal (they have two semi-separate languages in Norway apparently)
ddh74 said
“Fri” is Frisian, and “Bok” is Bokmal, the written Norwegian language.
Barna said
Fríz (frisen, frises) and bokmal (norwegian)
Fernando said
Frisian.
I am also unsure about BOK.
sardtok said
Fri is probably Frisian (Frysk, should be fry, not fri, but they are apparently not using standard language codes). Bok is Norwegian Bokmål.
Fredrik Helland said
I think that “Bok”/”NN” refers to the two norwegian official languages “Bokmål” and “Nynorsk”. Just a guess though.
Jonathan Waller said
Fri is Frisian…. I am confused by BOK as well…
Jesper said
Yes very cool map! Two things I don’t understand:
1. Shouldn’t there be lines between all languages, as each pair all must over 71 in common. / what does no line mean?
2. Shouldn’t there be lines between all in each group? Eg german and swedish? And what about German and French? Why no line?
johan steunenberg said
What about the Basques?
Andrew Constable said
I can’t find Basque…
Pilar said
The Basques always thinking they are the center of the world…
Fermin Bernaus said
Pilar your comment is so valuable … so you refuse to give an explanation. You better shut up instead of saying NOTHING
selikal said
what does FRI mean?
Serge said
Frisian
Hakiyetu said
Frisian
alexander said
I think FRISIAN
Language Bandit said
Frisian: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisian_languages
Wim said
Frisian
Festus Dirk Festerling said
Frisian..
Conor O'Kane said
That’s Frisian, an old North Holland (Friesland) language, very similar to English
Barna said
do you know where is Friseland???? Search it in front of shors of Nederlands! yes, that is the nice row of islands. 😛
Fernando said
Frisian
Esther said
It probably stands for Frisian languages (spoken in parts of the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark).
Jennifer Swanton Brown said
Reblogged this on My Twirly Blog and commented:
Language twirls and clusters. Constellations of words like stars.
Weekly Round-Up | ~ Bohemiacademia ~ said
[…] and quantum physics; ‘Spooky action’ builds a wormhole between entangled particles; Lexical differences among the languages of Europe. And, if you’re interested in learning new things in 2014, Buzzfeed have put together a handy […]
Lexical Distance Among the Languages of Europe | Enjoying The Moment said
[…] via Hacker News https://elms.wordpress.com/2008/03/04/lexical-distance-among-languages-of-europe/ […]
tr said
where is hungary , węgry?
Nicola Tronci said
Which language is “SRD” ? The one close to Italian in this chart
alexander said
Sardinian (I guess)
Language Bandit said
Sardinian.
Tom said
I suppose, SRD is meant to be Sardinian.
Emelie said
Sardinian
Mimi said
Sardinian
Wim said
Sardinian
Conor O'Kane said
Sardo (Sardinian)
Barna said
sardinian
Fernando said
Sardinian
Steph said
I can’t see bask language in the diagram…
Ash said
Basque is not related to these Indo-European languages, and that’s why.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basque_language
Jeff Segall said
That’s an unsatisfactory response because other non-Indoeuropean languages are listed. The reason might be that there is almost no loan words exchanged between Basque and its neighboring Indoeuropean languages. The only loan word I know of that the Spanish imported into Castellano from Basque is the word “izquierda” meaning “left.” The source is the Basque “izkerdu.” The Spanish were terrified of the word “siniestra” which derived from Latin “Sinister,” and the Basque word did not include the semantic feature of “evil, unholy, satanic” that “siniestra” held.
Jerome said
Slavs are not human beings.
Martin said
Really? Why not?
astheart said
You sound like being a nazi!
Marcin said
I can’t find Maltese here (maybe I am dumb), can you help?
Languages of Europe and Vocabulary Similarities | World Language Classroom Resources said
[…] you to Teresa Elms at Etymologikon for putting this fascinating information together, which is based on original research data from K. […]
Antonio said
What does it mean exactly “vocabulary divergence”? I mean: two languages sharing the same words but with different meanings all of them, would they still be close to each other?
Cheers
Geir Atle Ekaas said
Very cool map!
But not everything is right… one wrong is that Norway shows with to few that speak the language. Norwegian language (No not NN) should be marked as a language spoken by more than 3 million citizens.
Geir Atle Ekaas said
…I got i now: New Norwegian is marked as NN and Bokmål as Bok :-)) Then I guess the dots are in the right size for both of them.
Jostein Greibrokk said
Some more details about Norway: In Norway there are two official languges: The majority – bokmål (“Book language”, BOK) derives from Danish, and the minority – nynorsk (“New Norwegian” NN) made in the mid 19th and based upon the dialects and the old norse language.
Trude said
Sorry, but that is wrong. Norway has two official languages, Norwegian and sami. Norwegian is splitt in two forms (målformer); Bokmål and Nynorsk.
I miss the sami languages on the map, they are highly relevant in Scandinavia.
Nesib said
Bosnian language is missing between Croatian and Serbian
Karl said
Until a few years ago, there even wasn’t a Croatian and a Serbian language, it was a common language called Serbocroatian. Language politics in Serbia and in Croatia tried to make a difference where no difference was before.
Of course! said
So, apparently Turkish is not an European language?!
Richard Hammitt said
Like Finno-Ugric, Turkish is not Indo-European. That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be listed, though.
Curious said
But some, not all, Finno-Ugrian languages spoken In Europe is listed. Turkish is not. Nor is Romani listed. Why?
Fernando said
It isn’t.
Pavel Pavlov said
Where is Latin? The positioning of certain linguas is missleading…Real life is 3 dimentional…
Fernando said
We’re talking about living languages.
xme said
and basque?
José del moral said
Missing Basque
Distance Between Languages | Jennifer MacDonald said
[…] distance between languages, and language families. I’m definitely going to pull out this infographic on the Lexical Distance Among the Languages of Europe the next time I have to explain […]
Alex said
Yes, the original research data for the chart comes from K. Tyshchenko (1999), Metatheory of Linguistics, but this book was published in _UKRAINIAN_.
Jose A. Del Moral said
I’m missing Basque
joe said
ignoring Turkish and Turkic languages was a fatal mistake as they are the dwellers the of the Europe over 800 hundred years and currently över 6 million Turkish leaves un Europe.
Fernando said
That’s like saying we should include Arabic or Chinese. Come on…
Emily Serafa Manschot said
And Basque (Euskera) must be on another planet, right?
corcharelli said
Big mistake. Euskera must be in the middle, without connections with others languages because nobody knows its origin.
Michele Melis said
what “srd” stands for?
Language Bandit said
Sardinian.
Festus Dirk Festerling said
the language of Sardigna
Conor O'Kane said
Sardinian (Sardo)
ddh74 said
Sardinian.
Barna said
sardinian
Martino Faedda said
srd sardinian
Phaedra Royle said
What about Basque (a non-European language of Europe)?
Fernando said
You mean non-IndoEuropean. Basque is certainly European.
Piotrek said
Sr – circle refers to Silesian?
Kurt said
Sr probably refers to Sorbian, an isolated Slavic language spoken in Germany.
kolos said
rather sorb
Martin said
I think Sr = Serbian
Jarek said
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorbian_languages
Bela said
Sr >>> Serbian
Anton Hošek said
No, it’s Sorbian.
greyff said
no, that’s Sorbian (Upper and Lower)….
Łukasz Tudzierz said
No, it’s Serbian: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbian_language
David said
I think it refers to Sorbian languages (in Polish, języki łużyckie)
Keith O Brien said
Sr= Sorbian
Sova said
Sorbian (Serbołużyczanski)
Anna said
Silesian? I don’t think so. We can dispute about is it a language or dialect ;). I think “Sr” is Sorbian 😉 (jezyk Serbow np. łuzyckich)
Pawel said
I guess Sr is for Serbia, which makes Pol-Sr a strange connection.
Iga said
It should refer to the Sorbian languages.
carlosarepa said
Sorabian I think
Binky said
It’s probably Sorbian.
stano said
I think “Sr” refers to Sorbs – Sorbian
Florian said
Possibly Sorbian: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorbian_languages
Around 40,000 speakers according to the article. Silesian would have a larger circle (wikipedia claims around 500,000 speakers)
barosz said
I suppose it’s Sorbian, a Slavic language spoken in Germany (łużycki in Polish).
Svjatislav said
It is Sorbian (serbšćina).
ML said
Sorbs
Martin said
It must be Sorbian.
Maciej said
Sorbian (serbołużycki) ?
Wim said
Sorbian, a Slavic language in former Eastern Germany
Jeff Vanderziel said
Sr refers to Sorbian, a Slavic language spoken in eastern Germany (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorbian_languages)
alexander said
probably SORBIAN
Elisabeth Alder said
suppose it is Sorbian (Slavic group in Germany)
Language Bandit said
It probably refers to Sorbian.
Smoke said
Sr stands for Lower and Upper Sorbian in eastern Germany.
mimoid said
Sorbian most likely (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorbian_languages)
pok said
no, it’s serbian
pok said
I mean Lusatian Serbs 😉
Vladimir said
Sorbian obviously.
Someone said
I’d rather say it’s Sorbian, Silesian is only a dialect.
Dawe said
No, I think Sorb http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorbs
Robert said
Sorbian
рЕволюція said
Indeed… dates back to Charlemagne’s times when abbot Einhard describes his efforts of making peace with Slavic tribes against Saxons in Silesia…
Aaron Kallinen said
Or Sorbian?
Interesting to see that Belarusian and Ukrainian are so distanced from Russian. More than Bulgarian and Serbian/Croatian according to this.
The link between Portuguese and Irish is also interesting – probably through Galician language, a region with important Celtic heritage..
Arturo Malvestito said
It is because Russia as well as Serbia was heavily influenced by Tartars and Ottomans perhaps? While Belarus was never exposed to them until occupied by Russia in 1790s? And Ukrainian language as we know it was formed in Central and Western parts of the country – also out of Ottoman influence?
Michael said
Sorbian (Slavic in Germany)
Cedo said
No. it’s Sorbian, spoken in Germany by the Slavic minority group. Their largest concentration is around Dresden.
Bence said
I guess, it refers to Sorbian.
Raymond Roy said
Probably sorbs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorbs).
Gusztav said
No, to Sorbian (język łużycki, a właściwie dwa – górnołużycki i – bliższy polskiemu – dolnołużycki; obydwa na wymarciu, niestety…).
astheart said
Racja.
Marian Sloboda said
Sorbian (?)
Stanislav Stankovic said
I suppose it refers to Sorbian or Lusatian Serb. It’s a West Slavic language so the place between Czech and Polish would be expected.
Janusz said
no, I suppose it’s Sorbian (Łużycki)
lukashko said
I think it’s Sorbian (Lužická Srpčina)
michelangelo said
it’s Serbian
miwasatoshi said
Sorbian maybe?
Marek said
It refers to Sorbian (serbsko-łużycki)
Anna said
Rather to Serbian
Alastair Reid said
SRB = Serbian?
Jana said
I think, it is Wendish (Sorbians in Lusatia).
Pavel said
It refers to Sorabian (around Bautzen).
Lukas said
No, sorbian (upper and lower)
ddh74 said
I think “Sr” is Sorbian, a Slavic language spoken by a minority in Germany that lives near the borders of Poland and the Czech Republic.
vortex said
Most likely SR is for Sorbian
wojtekka said
I’d say that it’s Sorbian, due to close relation with Polish and Czech.
Joshua said
Sorbian is the only thing that fits and is still spoken
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorbian_languages
Adam said
rather Sorbian
Anna said
Silesian is not a language but dialect
Michał said
I suppose not – Silesian would have some kind of connection with German 🙂
Marcin said
Silesian is part of Polish language according to linguists.
oski said
those are Sorbian languages (Języki łużyckie)
Zeibura S. Kathau said
Sorbian
Michal said
Sr refers to Sorbian (po polsku serbołużycki).
Pine said
No, Serbian
Pine said
I am kidding 🙂 I am also curious. What means “Sr”?
Web Owl said
No, I think they refer to the Sorbian languages: Upper Sorbian and Lower Sorbian. These are Western Slavonic languages spoken in eastern Germany
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorbian_languages
xpictianocxpictianoc said
nope, Sorbian (Serbsko-łużycki
ola said
mysle ze chodzi tu o http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorbian_languages
Ewelina said
No, it’s Sorbian.
aa said
No, It is Sorbian from Czech-Polish-German border. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorbian_languages
Barna said
😮 your opinion where is r in Silesian????? 😛 rather sorb (wend), a little slavic nation in South-East- Germany. 😉 Doesn’t know it a polish man????! :p scandal
tomplus said
Probably the man lives in Warsaw or other region far from the Silesia region :p
Eike said
Sorbic
aga_dziouszka said
If I was to guess, I’d say Sorbian rather… Unfortunately 😛
Justyna Rudnicka said
Serbian, I’d say. Silesian is a dialect, not a language.
Carmela said
No, to Sorbian.
Jaga said
It refers to Sorbian (pl. łużycki)
David Graber said
It must be Sorbian, no?
Andy Kaz said
Sorbian, I should imagine.
jfaust said
No, Sr is Sorbian (Sorbisch) spoken in the Eastern part of Germany. It’s really two different languages – Upper and Lower Sorbian.
lea said
I’d rather say to the Sorbian Languages
Elcalavera said
probably sorbic!
dsds said
Silesian’s a dialect, not a language.
Robert said
Sr is probably Sorbian.
mariusz said
No, Sr means Sorbs (Serbo Łużyczanie).
Andrzej said
Upper Sorbian / Lower Sorbian
schaemtsichfremd said
I think it probably refers to Sorbian, but it seems to me as though Silesian’s position on the graph would be pretty similar.
copywriter said
Not Silesian. Sr = Sorbian.
The true Silesian is a Germanic language. The Polish Silesian today is only a dialect in Poland and consists of Polish and Czech. Its vocabulary has been influenced by the German language.
Name said
Sorbian, I think.
Konrad said
I think it’s Sorbian (the language spoken by Sorbs in south-east Germany)
Peter said
Sorbian, spoken in Germany at the Polish, Czech borders.
Beta said
That small cirle Sr is rather Serbo-Lutitian, a language from Slavic Western subgroup.
For it’s unfortunate fate the most western, invaded by Germans and now almost extinct (ca. 50.000 users nowdays)
lkcs said
Probably Serbian
Daniel said
Probably Sorbian (or Lusatian) languages as spoken in the Lusatia region of E. Germany.
What’s strange, though, is that Kashubian is missing, even though it has more than double the number of speakers.
blub2000 said
Sorbian would be my guess.
Bryan the Beerviking said
I suspect it’s Sorbian.
Daniel Reitman said
Probably Sorbian
Altariel said
Sorbian, I guess
Arek said
Serbian?
Joe said
Serbian i believe
Ric said
Sr to Serbołużyczanie raczej
Jonathon said
Where’s Basque?
Quarion said
I think because they can’t really place it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basque_language
Ay S. said
It’s likely left off because it’s not Indo-European; it belongs to none of the language families shown. In fact, it belongs to no language family at all: it’s an “isolate” language. That said, there’s a great deal of lexical sharing between Basque and Spanish, and Basque and French.
Marc said
Thats what I asked myself, too!
Monkey said
Somewhere out of the map, playing the language isolate game.
Carla said
very far away from everything we know 🙂
beca said
Did you imagine Basque is the only regional language missing?
For Romance languages alone—where’s Piedmontese (1 million speakers), Lombard (2 million speakers), Ligurian (500000 speakers), Corsican, Aragonese, Leonese, Neapolitan, Sicilian, Emiliano-Romagnolo, Gascon, Ladin, Galician, Fala, Mirandese, and many others—not to mention all the dialects of these languages (which in most parts of Italy varies considerably from town to town).
Unfortunately, if a language is not “official” it may as well be given a death sentence. God knows how many of these languages will be around in 100 years.
Laura said
Bai! (means “yes” in Basque) How would Basque connect with these other languages?
Juan said
exactly.
fccoelho said
Basque is probably disconnected from this graph. see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basque_language
Cédric said
Basque is not Indo-European, man, it’s an isolate.
Cédric said
And… Maybe it’s not considered to be a “major language of europe” 😉
Jacob Palmer said
I was wondering that myself…
Michael said
Basque isn’t part of the Indo-European family.
bartiddu said
It should be in a circle that’s not connected to any of the others at all!
Sean said
On it’s own little linguistic island, driving everyone around them mad!
Mārtiņš Veidemanis said
IMO the chart displays mostly Indo-European languages except some Finno-Ugric (Fi,Hu,Ee) which have had influenced some Indo-European languages. Basque is not IE.
Brad said
Basque is a language isolate, so it wouldn’t be included in an Indo-European language chart.
Mak said
Basque is not a indoeuropean language, basque is an isolated language which has no real connections to other languages.
Hannah Gold said
Basque is not Indo European as far as anyone can tell. It doesn’t fit in with any known family, eg, Semitic (Arabic, Hebrew, various N African languages) or Turkic (Turkish, Central Asian languages).
Raymond Roy said
Good question. Basque is not an indo-european language, but neither are Hungarian and Estonian, however shown on the map.
bob said
This is either a very good question or a subtle ironic joke. Nice work!
Jules said
Most theories about its origin seem unable to link it with other existing languages spoken in Europe. I suspect that’s the reason they didn’t include it.
Jeff S said
Best theory I’ve ever encountered regarding the origins of Basque: It was the only language spoken in much of western Europe until Indo-European speakers, emigrating (or fleeing) from eastern lands in the area of Boaz Koj, (near current Turkey) overran Basque-speaking territories and pursued the peaceful Basque speakers, pushing them out of all their communities. Fleeing toward the Pyrenees, found refuge in the shelter of that rocky and inhospitable environment. Below them, the speakers of Indoeuropean dialects which eventually developed into distinct language families, as well as speakers of proto Altaic, and proto Finno-Ugrian eventually carved out areas of settlement. Thus, the Basques were linguistically, geographically and socially isolated from the rest of the European world, surviving as a closed and remotely located culture into modern times.
giovanni cacioppo said
in your ass
Peter Rutenberg said
Basque is unrelated to anything except may distantly to Etruscan.
Karlos said
Basque is not in that chart just becouse it is unrelated to any of the languages in it. Basque is older than any other language in Europe and there is no study that could yet confirm its origin beyond any doubt
Christian Dohrmann said
Basque has no relation to any other language. Which is significant.
Admin said
should be a medium sized blob, probably hidden by the key below Spanish 🙂
Pedro Paulo Krahenbuhl. said
O Basco e o Lapão não são linguas indo-européias,
John said
Agreed. Basque is clearly a European language. Hungarian, Estonian, and Finnish originated in Asia, so they’re less European than Basque.
Erwan said
Basque is not an indo-european langage. The fact that this langage is still alive is amazing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basque_language
Katie said
Basque is a language isolate. It’s “mother” language has died out leaving it alone. It is considered “celto-iberic”
Xaime M said
Sorry but it is not true. Basque is not related on any way to celtic languages or to the ancient Celtiberic language.
Isissibus said
Basque doesn’t belong to any linguistic family, and it doesn’t have any relationship with european languages.. It is a “mysterious” language.
Aleks said
So is Albanian . Nobody knows anything about Albanian language, many think that is the very mother of all languages in Europe. I m not Albanian by the way.
David said
Basque is an isolate, with no known cognates.
Xavier Alfonseca said
Basque isn’t related to the others at all. It’s a language isolate.
ascholarwarrior said
Basque is unrelated to any of these, which are all Indo-European languages, and thus I suppose could not be “placed”: it would be equally distant from all of them, I imagine.
Altay said
You count hundreds languages that this so-called scholar has forgotten.
Edurne Alegria Aierdi said
Beacuse the origin of basque language or euskara is still unknown. It does not belong to any known language family.
Aleks said
So is Greek and Albanian , they are not related to any other language.
Kim said
That’s a good question, and I’m pretty sure the researchers themselves don’t know either. As a matter of fact, Basque is a language isolate. So whereas it should have been put on this map, because it IS an European language, where to put it is another question.
Justyna Rudnicka said
If you can’t find Basque on the chart, that just means what is obvious – Basque has virtually nothing in common with other European languages (it’s a language isolate).
Gerardo Romero said
El Vasco es una lengua aislada, aparentemente sin relación genética con ninguna de Europa.
el jota said
yes, where is it?
John Marshall said
i just wondered about the Basque Country. Euskera it supposed not to the linked to any other language.
beco said
I don’t see it, but should be a completely isolated island somewhere in the graphic, since Basque people arrived Europe (iberic peninsule) long before most of other cultures (NatGeo: http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2012/03/06/basque-origins-predate-arrival-of-farmers-in-iberian-peninsula-dna-analysis-finds/) and some grammatical similarities have been found between Basque language and a tiny asian dialects.
Jiří Dobrý said
10 cm left from your screen 😉
Benjamin Conway said
Basque is an language isolate, so (I believe) it shares no connection with any other living language.
Georges Kanoute said
Floating around somewhere in space, totally unrelated to anything ever.
Ramon Manuel Ramos said
Basque is not an Indo-European language. Hindi shares more with these languages than Basque. Interesting isn’t it.
sonja said
Norther Spain.
Doniskicheck said
Basque is not a language… it’s just a spanish dialect
Wendy said
No it’s not.
Jaume Saumell said
With all due respect, you don’t know anything about Basque and Spanish, do you? In simple words, a language is a dialect from another language when a native speaker from one and a native speaker from the other are able to understand each other. Not everything is equal but there’s enough similarities to allow a fluid communication. Basque is completely dissimilar to ANY OTHER LANGUAGE IN THE WORLD, so it’s absurd to say it’s a dialect from any other language.
On the other hand, Spain is a country with FOUR different official languages (that is Spanish, Catalan, Galician and Basque). And I said DIFFERENT LANGUAGES, not one language (Spanish) with three dialects. And I should know what I’m talking about since I speak three of them and know a lot about the fourth.
So please, next time at least read the Wikipedia before saying such nonsense.
Frank said
Basque isn’t connected to any of the other languages, so it drifted away off the chart.
Silvia said
Basque doesn t belongs to Indo-European languages family.
Wendy said
Poor Basque doesn’t belong to anything..
Rhina said
Basque is one of the Finno-Ugric languages, unrelated to Spanish, despite the location of its speakers, except for current borrowings from it.
Alexandros said
Basque is a pre-indoeuropean language and has nothing to do with the rest. But so is Finno-Ugric…
AMAIUR said
As far as I know (with the right of Basque speaker) I know that the basque is a non-Indo-European language, as the Finish and the Hungarian mean to be. But if the article is about the “Lexical Distance Among the Languages of Europe”, I feel the basque should appear too (more over 50% of the basque lexicon come directly from the Latin according to some researches). So if the article would be about the relation between the Indo-European language we can dispense with the Basque but not when we want to speak about the lexical relations between the languages in Europe (nothing said about Indo-Europeans there).For the rest I like very much the idea of the graphic.
Jeff S said
The presence of loan words in a language is no demonstration of genetic relationship at all. English has borrowed lexical items from a wide variety of languages, many of which aren’t even Indoeuropean. Basque, as I have stated in another entry, is a language isolate which a number of researchers now think was spoken by a population that originally had lived well spread out within Europe and was millenia ago pushed further westward and,ultimately, into Spain by Indoeuropean speakers, and up into the Pyrenees where no one else wanted to settle. This theory was published in the Science section of the New York Times a few years ago. It is a conjecture, but no one has come up with a better one.
formiga said
Jeff S said
15 January 2014 at 10:45 pm
The presence of loan words in a language is no demonstration of genetic relationship at all. English has borrowed lexical items from a wide variety of languages, many of which aren’t even Indoeuropean. Basque, as I have stated in another entry, is a language isolate which a number of researchers now think was spoken by a population that originally had lived well spread out within Europe and was millenia ago pushed further westward and,ultimately, into Spain by Indoeuropean speakers, and up into the Pyrenees where no one else wanted to settle. This theory was published in the Science section of the New York Times a few years ago. It is a conjecture, but no one has come up with a better one.
Except for the fact that Bask is spoken around the Basque Mountains and not around the Pyrenees, where Catalan is spoken…
Jeff S said
Formiga is not quite right. There is no such entity as the Basque mountains. The Pyrenees separate Spain and France. Catalonia (also spelled Cataluña) occupies the extreme northeast of Spain, so it does touch upon the Eastern Pyrenees. But San Sebastian, the capital of the Basque region, touches the base of the western Pyrenees, and a large percentage of the Basque people live within that mountain range, some on the Spanish side, some on the French. Read the following Wikipedia excerpt:
Basque (endonym: Euskara, IPA: [eus̺ˈkaɾa]) is the ancestral language of the Basque people, who inhabit the Basque Country, a region spanning an area in northeastern Spain and southwestern France. It is spoken by 27% of Basques in all territories (714,136 out of 2,648,998).[1] Of these, 663,035 live in the Spanish part of the Basque Country and the remaining 51,100 live in the French part.[1] Basque is considered to be a language isolate.[2]
In academic discussions of the distribution of Basque in Spain and France, it is customary to refer to three ancient provinces in France and four Spanish provinces. Native speakers are concentrated in a contiguous area including parts of the Spanish autonomous communities of the Basque Country and Navarre and in the western half of the French département of Pyrénées-Atlantiques. The Basque Autonomous Community is an administrative entity within the binational ethnographic Basque Country incorporating the traditional Spanish provinces of Biscay, Gipuzkoa, and Álava, which retain their existence as politico-administrative divisions.
formiga said
Jeff S: of course there are Basque Mountains; I’ve seen them myself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basque_Mountains
Jeff S said
Thank you for your comment. Note that the very article you sent me said: “some consider that the Cantabrian Mountains and the Pyrenees are a single greater range and the Basque Mountains are just part of both [1]” So I suppose both of us have some justice in our conclusions. The major point of what I´ve written regarding the Basque language (Euskara) is the hypothesis that they once inhabited a much larger area of Europe and that millenia ago were pushed further and further west by incoming peoples of Indoeuropean and Finno-ugrian linguistic stocks, and that the Basque speakers could not resist them and retreated further and further west, into the highlands of Southern France and Northern Spain where the terrain was so unfriendly that their pursuers had no further interest in chasing them. Thus, they became the indigenous population of those highland areas. It´s an interesting conjecture and would explain why they are a language isolate.
St. Izzy O'Cayce said
That’s right, everyone. The most utilitarian Romance language to learn is Italian.
Take *that*, Spanish!
(Now, how do I get my lawn guy to stop mowing down my hedges?)
Russel said
I dont completely agree with this chart. I think that it is missing several links, such as Portuguese and Italian, Portuguese and Romance, and others.
Also, the size of the ballons showing the quantity of speakers is misleading. They needed to create more categories (such as >100 million, >300 million, >500 million). Looking the chart, you think that Polish, Ukraine, German, Italian, Portuguese are in the same level of English, French, Spanish.
Although I am Portuguese speaker, I still strongly believe that if you learn Spanish, you will be able to communicate with waaaay more more people in the globe than if you learn Italian.
carlosarepa said
Actually not. I think it would be Romanian, since it preserves most original Latin features than any other Romance language. So with Romanian, it would be easier to understand other Romance languages.
Anna said
just learn latin if you want to understand romance languages. plus because its a dead language it should be eaisier to learn
Ricardo said
Looking at that chart, where all bubbles with over 30MM speakers are the same size, you would think so. However, there are about 60MM native speakers of Italian, 200MM of Portuguese and 390MM speakers of Spanish. So the Por-Spa duo has 10 times more speakers than Italian…
Cheers.
Someone said
According to this graph, Spanish is closer to more Romance language than Italian (even though Italian is closer to the classical Latin). Also, the number of native Spanish speakers is nearly 390 million, while only 60 million people speak Italian as a native language. I don’t see why it would be so as you said.
Aidan Vey said
It really depends what you mean by the most utilitarian. For learning other Romance languages, yes, for speaking to many people around the world or learning Germanic languages, no.
David said
Only if you don’t count the millions of South Americans, who also speak Spanish.
Rafa said
It depends on how you define “utilitarian”: either you want to learn more languages or you want to communicate with the greater amount of people in their first language.
From the image one can infer that if your mother tongue is not in the group of Romance languages, your best bet is to learn French, as it acts as an “entry point” to the group of romance languages. If you already speak a romance language and want to learn another language, then yes, learning Italian seems to be the best option (on average).
That situation only holds in the case that your goal is to LEARN another language (or many of them). If, on the other hand, your goal is to communicate to a wider audience, you’ll probably want to learn a language that is widely used, then Spanish is the best option of it’s group, followed by French, then Italian.
On the other hand, Spanish have a lot of loanwords from Arabic, which actually introduces you to a different set of languages. For instance, Spanish “algodón” stands for Italian “cotone”, or “cotton” in English. Dissecting “algodón” you get “al-godón”, which is some how a variation of “il cotone”.
As for your lawn guy, I prefer not to give any opinion)
Roko Ono said
Spanish is the second most spoken language in the world take that English, Italian might be useful to make a fool out of yourself when going to your local pizza joint, maybe you should learn to mow down your hedges yourself
Sans Cosm said
Ha ha ha…. Not. I would be amazed if you speak other language than english. Dumbass!!
Javier said
Not sure proximity always means ease to learn another language.
Among latin languages, portuguese speakers are said to be the ones that can learn other latin languages the easiest (spanish and italian at least)
Sorin Pop said
I think Romanian competes very well with this this monopoly of portuguese. Actually, I think a Romanian can learn much easier Italian than a Portuguese. By the way, Romanian and Portuguese seem to sound the most similar to each other from all the romance languages, interesting coincidence.
João Mamede said
Actually a Portuguese understands Italian, Spanish, Catalunian and Gallegan and French much easier than Italian.
So learn PT and you’ll speak all the others in a few months.
:p
Girl said
OBVIOUSLY. it’s the direct derivation of latin.
bordari said
Or Catalan.
yo mismo said
F**k off and die
PS: it is a joke jejejeje
PS2: no!!!! xD
Laura Blumenthal said
Is there a legend for this? I’m having trouble with BOK and SRD.
Catharina said
BOK – most probably Bokmål; SRD => SRO – Sardinian?
Kurt said
Bok is bokmal (Norwegian), srd is Sardinian, basque is a language spoken in Europe but it is not part of the European languages families, it is an isolate.
caileigh said
Sardinian?
Peter Buchanan said
I’m pretty sure BOK is Norwegian Bokmal (the other variety is Norwegian Nynorsk represented by NN). SRD I’m pretty sure, given how close it is to Italian, is Sardinian.
Anna said
I believe BOK is Norwegian Bokmal and SRD is Sardinian.
Ay S. said
I’d say SRD is Sardinian, since it branches from Italian. I don’t know what BOK would be. My best (but not very good) guess is Bornholmsk, a dialect of Danish. But I don’t know why that would merit a bubble of its own.
Emma said
I’m assuming BOK is Bokmal and NN is Nynorsk; two different ways of writing Norwegian.
SRD could be Sardinian perhaps?
Martin said
SRD could be Sardininan I assume
Abobo said
The Norwegian language has two written standards:
BOK is Norwegian Bokmål (literally “book speak”), while NN is a form of writing-only Norwegian called Nynorsk (literally “new Norwegian”)
SRD, I’m guessing is Sardinian.
Davide Corda said
I think ‘Bok’ means bokmal, ‘Srd’ means sardinian for sure.
pindsvin said
Bok stands for Bokmål, which is one type of written Norwegian, the other being Nynorsk (NN in the chart).
Srd I´m guessing stands for Sardinian.
Lorenzo Guadagno said
SRD might be Sardinian, BOK Norwegian Bokmal.
A legend would be good. And indeed, how about Basque?
jpluimers said
I think they mean this:
BOK = Bokmål http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokmal
SRD = Sardinian http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sardinian_language
Glottyb said
Hi. BOK is Bokmal – one of the two standard versions of Norwegian and the most widely used. The other is Nyorsk I believe. SRD I reckon is probably Sardinian. Hope that helps 🙂
Vaidas said
SRD, I am guessing, is Sardinian
BOK is Bokmål (Norwegian)
Lars Juhl Jensen said
BOK must be the Norwegian Bokmål. SRD is probably Sardinian – I am guessing based on the similarity to Italian.
maciej said
haven’t found any legend, but i think i can help you, srd stands for sardinian, while bok is bokmål – kind of version of norwegian
Bálint N. B. said
I assume BOK stands for Norwegian Bokmål and NN is Nynorsk. SRD is definitely Sardinian! Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think PRO is Provençal (Occitan) and RM is Romansh.
landskinken said
Bok is probably bokmål which is one of two languages in norway, nn is the other..
Martin Toresson said
The BOK probably stands for “bokmål” vich is a varaiant of norwegian. Im not very sure what the difference is, but I can’t see what it would be otherwise. The Srd probably is Sardinian, but someone else probably know more about that part, since Im not very educated in the mediteranian languages.
Joost said
BOK is Bokmal, one of 2 official written forms of the Norwegian language. It means Book Language and is mostly derived from Danish with some adaptations of Old-Norse.
Peter M. said
I’m pretty sure BOK is Bokmål, which is one of the written types of Norwegian and is much closer to Danish. That would make NN Nynorsk, which is a more modern written type of Norwegian. SRD I’m less sure about, but if I was to guess based on the abbreviation alone, I’d say it’s Sardinian. However, this leads to the question of why Sardinian was included but other Italian languages weren’t, and I don’t know enough linguistics to say one way or another on that point.
Keith O Brien said
BOK = Bokmal , a dialect of Norwegian. SRD = i assume is Sardinian.
Tristan Roberts said
Bokmal is presumably Bokmal given its proximity to Danish (it’s the traditional written language of Norway and was basically imported Danish). SRD is probably Sardinian given the closeness to Italian and Catalan.
I’m struggling with Rm though.
Adi David said
I would imagine SRD is for Sardinian.
Daniel Murphy said
“Bok” is Norwegian Bokmål (NN is Norwegian Nynorsk), and “Srd” is Sardinian.
Camilla said
I’m pretty sure BOK refers to Bokmaal, one of Norway’s two written languages (the other one is NN, Nynorsk). They are not generally considered two separate languages, as they represent the same spoken language, but are based on different dialects.
carlosarepa said
BOK is Bokmal Norwegian (old Norwegian) and SRD is Sardinian =)
Heinrich Pfandl said
Dear Laura: BOK should be Bokmål [‘buːkmoːl] , a variety of Norwegian. SRD is, maybe, Sardinian. But there are some languages without states I miss: Basque? Occitan? Rusyn? Anyway – it’s nice. Thank you, Teresa.
Wendy said
SRD is Sardinian, it’s not a dialect but an independent language. BOK no clue… 🙂
Neil Sands said
BOK = Norwegian I think (Bokmal). SRD=Sardinian?
Verena Hammer said
As to BOK, I found in Wikipedia: “As established by law and governmental policy, there are two official forms of written Norwegian – Bokmål (literally “book tongue”) and Nynorsk (literally “new Norwegian”). The Norwegian Language Council is responsible for regulating the two forms, and recommends the terms “Norwegian Bokmål” and “Norwegian Nynorsk” in English.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_language
Matija Brković said
I think (but I may be wrong) BOK stands for Bokmål (one of the official Norwegian standards). Similary, I think that NN stands for Nynorsk, the other official Norwegian standard. SRD may stand for Sardinian? Some acronyms corespond with ISO language codes, but some do not.
Per-Olof said
Laura, I´m from sweden but i´d say that
BOK = BOKmål
NN = NyNorsk
ie both are norwegian
Hitch-Hikers Handbook said
I’m guessing BOK would be Bokmål, as opposed to Nynorsk (NN) standing next to it. And SRD is probably Sardinian, slightly different to Italian but linked to Catalan, it makes sense.
But a legend would be useful nonetheless.
Ah Leum Kwon said
guessing it’s Bokmal ( in Norway) and Sardinian
tamas said
BOK an NN are referring to bokmål and nynorsk, the two official written languages of Norway. That is 100% sure.
SRD, I have no idea. Maybe sardinian (South-Italy)
Yagi-dono said
BOK is Norwegian (Bokmal) and NN is Norwegian as well, (Nynorsk).
SRD is Sardinian, most likely.
Oleksandr Hudyma said
As i understand:
BOK – is a bokmal, one of the 2 Norwegian languages, another one is Nunorsk (NN sign on the scheme)
SRD – Sardinian
Xcid said
BOK stands for Bokmål, the older of the two norwegiean languages (as compared to the modernized NN, nynorsk), it is still the prefered written standard if I’m not misstaken.
I can’t help you with SRD thou
Martin said
BOK refers to Norwegian Bokmål. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokmål
beca said
Srd is probably Sardinian
MSL said
SRD should be Sardinian. BOK (or BCK?), from its position in the graph and number of speakers, should be Low German. Not sure what the initials stand for, though.
dwngrd said
Bok= Bokmal, written Norwegian.
Srd= Sardinian, an offshoot of Italian.
mimoid said
I’m guessing BOK is Bokmål (the official written standard of Norwegian) and SRD is Sardinian.
The thin dotted lines seem to be totally random though. At least for Hungarian they certainly are.
carla said
SRD Sardinia, sardo is a language, as romano of Rome
.
John Goodwillie said
Bok would be Bokmal (Norway) and Srd Sardinian, but I’m stuck on Rm.
Andy Walker said
BOK is Bokmål, one of the forms of “Norwegian”, together with Nynorsk (NN).
I assume that SRD is Sardinian, but in that case the circle looks too big, according to the key.
Andy Walker said
By size and close link to Italian it actually looks more like Sicilian – but that would presumably be SCN, which I don’t see.
Kristophe said
SRD is Sardinian, and BOK is probably “boknorsk”(book norwegian) as opposed to NN “Nynorsk”(new norwegian), which are two standards of the same language, but since the Scandanavian languages are so close, one standard can share more features with another language.
José Carlos said
I think BOK is Bokmål (one of the two ‘Norwegians’, the other one being NN, Ny Norsk) and SRD is Sardinian. But yeah, very lame that there’s no legend.
avjn said
BOK is probably Bokmål (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokm%C3%A5l) — the companion to NN, or Nynorsk (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nynorsk). Yes, the Norwegians need two different versions of their language for some reason. SRD I would guess to be Sardinian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sardinian_language) from it’s relationship to Italian.
Jeff Vanderziel said
SRD is Sardinian and Bok is Bokmal, the dominant Norwegian dialect (the NN is New Norwegian, the other major dialect)
Steve Fox said
BOK is Bokmål (the main formal version of Norwegian, with the other being Nynorsk, NN in the chart); SRD would be Sardinian.
alexander said
SRD : how about Sardinian ?
BOK = ??
Stefan Geisler said
BOK is Original Norwegian “Bokmål” where as NN is “Nynorsk” (New Norwegian).
Veronika Larsen said
Bokmål is spoken in Norway. SRD can be Sardinian.
Thomas Brevik said
Bok is Bokmål – one of the three official languages of Norway. Bok means book, i.e. the written language. Bokmål is norwegian influenced by Danish from four hundred years of common rule that ended in 1814. NN is Nynorsk, which is based on more traditional norwegian dialects.
Heide Mc Alister-Bates said
Bokmal (Norwegian written) and Sardinian, I believe.
Piter Keo said
I guess BOK stands for Bokmål and SRD for Sardinian.
Luigi Nardacchione said
is SRD related to Sardinia? I think so…
Someone said
My guess is:
SRD = Sardinian
BOK = bokmal (classic Norwegian)
Nils said
BOK is “bokmål” – one of the official Norwegian languages. The one that stems from Danish, because Norway was under Danish rule for 400 years. During the late 1800, the national romantic period, the linguist Ivar Aasen collected Norwegian dialects and created a new language based on these, mainly western Norwegian dialect. This i the one abbr. NN – Nynorsk – NewNorwegian. As you can see from the diagram, NN is more closely related to Icelandic and the Faroe Islands. Nynorsk is uses by about 10-15 % og the population. Both languages understand each other perfectly, and both are used also in national broadcasting, for instance.
Maria said
SRD must be Sardinian. BOK stands for bokmål, that is a variant og written Norwegian along with NN – nynorsk. The latter is not as common as bokmål.
Cédric said
I don’t know about BOK but SRD is probably Sardinian
Katri said
BOK is probably Norwegian Bokmal, SRD – maybe Sardinia?
Weisswurst said
BOK is probably Bokmal (Norwegian) and SRD, just guessing based on position Sardinian.
Ferenc Kepe said
to Piotrek: Not, this is abbreviation of Sorbian (language)
to Laura Blumenthal: SRD is Sardian (limba sarda) and BOK is bokmål (a dialect of modern Norwegian, while NN is nynorsk, another dialect of Norwegian)
Andreas Skovse said
Laura, I don’t know about SRD, but BOK is Bokmål, the ‘old Norwegian’ based on written Danish (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokmål). NN is Nynorsk (New Norwegian) developed as a nationalistic alternative to the Danish-looking Bokmål.
Isabelle Giguère said
They are all ISO 639 standard codes. You can search for them here : http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/php/langcodes-search.php
Isabelle Giguère said
Except BOK and SRD, you’re right 😦
chris y said
Presumably Bokmål (with NN=Nynorsk) and Sardinian.
Aidan Vey said
BOK refers to Bokmål – a more traditional, written Norwegian. Compare to NN – Nynorsk – i.e. New Norwegian
SRD I am guessing is Sardinian due to proximity to Italian
A legend would be really useful with this, otherwise good, figure
petersonderborg said
Bokmal literary norwegian… SRB serbian?
petersonderborg said
SRD next to italian… sardinian perhaps?
wfrew said
Sardinia and Bornholm
Pablo said
I’m pretty sure BOK stands for Bokmal, a variant of Norwegian. SRD is probably Sardinian
Bence said
SRD is surely Sardinian, but I have no idea for BOK.
Bartosz Kołodziej said
BOK is bokmal and NN is nynorsk, they are variants of Norwegian
Srd is Sardinian probably
D said
I guess BOK is Bokmål which is the most common version of norwegian (along with NN= New Norwegian).
Ricky said
SRD=Sardinian?? I heard it´s close to Italian and Catalan, so it must be that.
Raymond Roy said
Bok must be Bokmål (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokm%C3%A5l). Srd must be Sardinian (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sardinian_language).
John Wexler said
Bokmal and Sard, I should think. Bokmal is one variety of Norwegian, and Nynorsk is another.
jio said
bokmal, one standard of norwegian language
Phe said
Bokmål (Norwegian standard) and Sardinian
Jules said
BOK = (Wikipedia Quote) “Bokmål ([ˈbuːkmɔːl], literally “book tongue”) is an official written standard for the Norwegian language, alongside Nynorsk. ”
SRD = (Wikipedia Quote) “Sardinian (Logudorese: sardu/saldu, limba sarda Campidanese: sardu/sadru, lingua sarda) is a Romance language spoken on most of the island of Sardinia (Italy). It is the most conservative of the Romance languages in terms of phonology and is noted for a Paleosardinian substratum.”
CoolKoon said
“BOK” is probably short for “Bokmal” (=”by the book”), a version of Norwegian (or smth like that) and “SRD” probably means “Sardinian”, which is a Southern Italian dialect.
Cecilia von Weissenberg said
HI!
BOK is one of Norway’s official languages, Bokmål (“book language”, old Norwegian – as opposed to NN =Nynorsk). SRD is Sardo, i suppose (spoken in Sardinia).
Tkachi said
My guess is that SRD is Sardu (from Sardinia) and BOK is Bokmål (one of two standards for Norwegian, the other being Nynorsk (NN))
z said
SRD must be Sard – Sardinia
xabier said
Bok means bokmål
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokm%C3%A5l
Skata said
I’m guessing BOK is Bokmal, a traditional form of Norwegian, whereas NN is Nynorsk, a newer form.
Viki said
Bokmol (Norwegian, older than NN-Nynorsk) and sardynian I believe.
Vuk said
Bok – bokmål, main Norwegian standard (NN is nynorsk, the Western Norwegian standard)
Srd is Sardinian I guess.
Hm, that made me thing – it’s missing Maltese!
Peter Rutenberg said
BOK and NN are two different types of Norwegian. Not sure about SRD but possibly refers to Sardinian dialect.
Zdenek Zikan said
BOK is Bokmål, one of two official variants of Norwegian. They have two standardized versions of the language in Norway, bokmål (lit. “book tongue”), which is the most commonly used variant, and nynorsk (lit. “new norwegian”) which is a century and a half old attempt to unify dialects get rid of Danish influences.
Zdenek Zikan said
and SRD is probably Sardinian.
Ben said
BOK is Norwegian Bokmål (as opposed to NN, or Norwegian Nynorsk) and not sure about SRD…Sardinian, maybe?
miwasatoshi said
BOK = Norwegian-Bokmal
SRD = Sardinian
H said
BOK is bokmål (norwegian), and SRD is sardinian. A legend would be nice, though.
jpalmula said
Sardinian & Bokmål, I assume
g2-50cccebca7e226a2f2e8f28f37997b35 said
SRD I think Sard (Sardinia)
Marek said
I’d say SRD is Sardinian
Stephan said
BOK = Norwegian Bokmal, SRD = Sardinian
Marcus Graly said
BOK I’m assuming is “Book” Norwegian: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokm%C3%A5l
SRD, probably Sardinian: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sardinian_language
I agree that a legend would be most helpful though.
Simon Richardson said
Srd = Sardininan; BOK = Bjork???
Phil Korsnes said
BOK has got to be “Bokmal” which is proper Norwegian (analagous to “Hoch Deustch”), while NN is “Ny Norsk” (“New Norwegian”) which is a more countrified dialect.
andrea said
SRD is Sardinian, spoken in Sardinia!
Thomas K said
I’m assuming BOK is Bokmål, which is Norwegian. NN is new Norwegian. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokmal
Simon said
BOK = Bokmål, SRD probably Sardinian
jan smith said
BOK: Bokmål (dialect of Norwegian)
SRD: Sardinian
Rolf Edholm said
It stands for Bokmål (Traditional Norwegian) and Sardinian
Darth Iago said
bökmal; sardenian
chriscollison said
Sardinia? No idea on BOK though!
Mike Błaszczak said
bok=bokmal=language spoken in Norway
SRD=probably sardinian dialect
sorinf said
sardinian and bokmal
Wim said
BOK = Bokmal, which is basically East-Norwegian and pretty much equal to Danish
SRD = Sardinian
hrulgar said
SRD – sardinian
Henrik Tengby said
I think SRD must be sardinian. BOK is norvegian (Bokmål). NN is Nynorsk, another norwegian variety.
Risto Salonen said
BOK = Norwegian Bokmål
SRD = Sardinian?
Ivan said
BOK = Bokmål, Norwegian. SRD dunno
Jon said
BOK(Bokmål) and NN(Nynorsk) are the two variations of norweigan. Srd might be “sardu”, spoken on Sardinia.
Phil said
Bok stands for ‘bokmal’, which is the standard written and spoken language in Norway, together with Nynorsk.
Srd stands for ‘sardu’, the indigenous dialect of Sardegna
Giovanni said
Would it possible SRD = Sardinian?
Lukas said
BOK = norwegian bokmaal (while NN is nynorsk, “the other norwegian”),
SRD = sardinian
Eirik Nygard said
Norway has two official written languages, BOKmål and NyNorsk. Bokmål is more similar to Danish because of history, while NyNorsk(NewNorweigan) is more like traditional dialects of the western part of Norway.
Eirik Nygard said
And I guess SRD represents Sardinian
Klaudia Kw. said
SRD must be Sardinian and BOK Bokmål.
Karen Sandness said
I would imagine that BOK is Norwegian Bokmål (with NN being Ny-Norsk, the other official dialect of Norwegian) and SRD is Sardinian.
Ignazio said
I guess SRD stands for Sardinian, spoken in the homonymous Italian island.
Jordan Brod said
SRD – Sardinian language. BOK – maybe Norwegian Bokmål ??
Ignazio said
And BOK for Norwegian Bokmål.
This list can help: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISO_639-1_codes
Ronan Hindle said
Pretty sure BOK is Bokmål. It’s listed RIGHT next to Danish, and close to Nynorsk (NN) and Swedish. I would guess that SRD is Sardinian, given where it lies in the Romance languages.
Massimo said
SRD is sardinian, the language spoken in Sardinia.
Just a Joe said
Bokmal and Sardinian
ludovicsf said
BOK is for Bokmål, NN is for Nynorsk, which are the two main languages in Norway.
SRD must be Sardinian, I guess
Paul Held said
I assume from the closeness to Italian that SRD is Sardinian. BOK must be Bokmal, or written Norwegian.
Noah Rahman said
Bokmal (Norwegian) and Sardinian, most likely
Vivian Y said
BOK is Norwegian Bokmal, and I’m not certain as to what SRD is. 🙂
Festus Dirk Festerling said
BOK propably norwegian bokmal, SRD sardic (the bigger island west of italy)?
Ron Alcalá said
SRD should be Sardinian language, I think.
Gregory McNamee said
Bokmål (written Norwegian) and Sardu (Sardinian)
DrC said
BOK – Bokmål (spoken in Norway, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokm%C3%A5l)
SRD – Sardu (spoken in Sardinia/Italy, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sardinian_language)
Daf said
An earlier poster said this when looking for Norwegian: “New Norwegian is marked as NN and Bokmål as Bok” and I presume SRD top be Sardinian.
To the poster asking about why the reference to “Romance” languages rather than “Roman” – I don’t know the origin but those languages are commonly known as Romance languages.
Finally, quite a number of languages aren’t mentioned, including Corsican, Manx and Cornish. What has surprised me is that nobody has noticed that Basque is missing.
Markus said
I’m guessing BOK is bokmål (and NN in not norwegian, but nynorsk). Can’t help you with SRD.
ddh74 said
I think “Sr” is Sorbian, a Slavic language spoken by a minority in Germany that lives near the borders of Poland and the Czech Republic. I think “BOK” is Bokmål, or the written Norwegian language, and “SRD” is Sardinian.
vortex said
SRD is for Sardinian
vortex said
and BOK stands for Bokmål – one of the official standards for Norwegian, while NN stands for Nynorsk – another official standard for Norwegian
Wlad said
BOK – try to translate this word from Turkish. It`s very funny, I assure you.
Aaron H said
BOK would seem to refer to Bokmal one of the forms of Norwegian the other being Nynorsk(NN).Stab in the dark here I assume SRD is Sardinian.
Henrik said
BOK stands for “bokmål” (Norwegian), more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokm%C3%A5l
SRD, I guess, stands for Sardinian (Italian) or something? Not sure 🙂 (Found this tho: http://www.ethnologue.com/language/srd)
Joshua said
Bokmal (Written norwegian) & Sardinian.
Leif Pareli said
BOK most likely is Norwegian Bokmål (“Book language” ) = one of two varieties of the Norwegian language, the other being nynorsk (“New Norwegian”) which must be NN in the chart. Bokmål is closely related to Danish whereas nynorsk shows similarities with Icelandic and Faroese.
Dylan said
I assume BOK is Bokmål and SRD is Sardinian.
Elspeth Jones said
I think these are Bokmål and Sardinian but not sure of Sr. Any thoughts?
LizaSoldatova said
BOK is Norwegian bokmål, I believe
Saul Benavides said
BOK refers to Bokmål, one variety of Norwegian.
Torbjørn said
There are two official versions of Norwegian, bokmål (“book tongue”, most common) and nynorsk (“new Norwegian”). BOK is bokmål.
SRD is probably Sardinian.
Judith said
I’m guessing they’re Norsk Bokmål (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokm%C3%A5l) and Sardinian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sardinian_language).
Jonathan Watson said
I imagine they would be Bokmal and Sardinian.
Georg Fuchs said
Bokmål and Sardinian
Zeibura S. Kathau said
Norwegian Bokmal and Sardinian
Juha said
I believe BOK is Bokmål and SRD is Sardinian.
Michal said
BOK is probably Bokmål (Norwegian) and SRD Sardinian.
Amalia said
http://www.ethnologue.com/browse/codes/s
Tony said
I would guess that those are Bokmal (a form of Norwegian) and Sardinian.
Maija Atarinová said
Bokmal – norwegian, Sardinian, Sorbian (Sr) maybe?
but I’m not the author..
Øyvind Rogstad said
BOK is Bokmål, the main variety of Norwegian, of which the other variety is NN, Nynorsk (“New Norwegian”) which again is, confusingly, closer to Old Norse tham Bokmål is. SRD is presumably Sardinian.
Simos Papanas said
SRD should be Sardenian… BOK I have no idea…
Simos Papanas said
Here is BOK!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokm%C3%A5l
botva said
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
7 January 2014 at 3:32 am
BOK – bokmål – danish-norwegian, or norwegian-danish 🙂
SRD – sardinian
David said
sardinian and bokmal (norwegian).
too bad Basque is not there.
also, I’m surprised to see Slovenian and Albanian that close,
I wouldn’t connect them at all.
João Faria said
My guess: SRD – Sardinian; BOK – Norwegian (bokmål); NN – Norwegian (Nynorsk)
Paul Little said
Sardinian? Can’t help you with BOK tho :-p Probably another Scandinavian Island colony, as Faroese is there seperate to Norwegian….
Paul Little said
oh the irony, misspelling “separate” in a language discussion
HRG said
BOK seems to be Boksmal (IIRC), a version of Norwegian, and SRD is Sardic.
nndfnd said
I think SRD could be Sardo, the languaje from Sardegna.
Mattia Inselvini (@mattia_inse) said
I think SRD is sardinia
Fernando said
SRD is Sardo.
She lee poty (@fef88) said
Bok should be Bokmal, the most common form of written language in Norway, and Srd should be the sardinian language…
Klimt said
I think BOK stands for Bokmål, but yeah I agree there should be a legend for this :[
Octavian said
I think that BOK refers to Bokmal, that is the standard version of Norvegian. SRD refers to Sardinian, a language that is often mis-interpreted as an Italian dialect but it stands as a distinct Romance language whatsoever.
Bjorn Carlen said
BOK, Norwegian bokmål
SRD, Sardo, Sardinian?
sardtok said
BOK is Norwegian Bokmål. SRD I believe is Sardinian spoken on the island Sardinia.
Emil said
SRD is sardinian, BOK I haven’t figured.
Alex Bowley said
I’d guess Bokmål (standard written Norwegian) and Sardinian.
Juuso said
Hi! I’d assume them to be Sardinian and bokmål. The latter is basically Norwegian, but they tend to divide nynorsk (new Norwegian) and bokmål into different languages.
Joona Palaste said
BOK=Bokmål (standard Norwegian). I don’t know what SRD is.
Joona Palaste said
Wait, Sardinian?
matt newburn said
Bokmal and Sardinian
Justin said
Bokmål (as opposed to Nynorsk = NN) and Sardinian.
Michael Tonkin said
Bokmål (older Norwegian) vs NyNorsk (New Norwegian) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokm%C3%A5l
SRD I guess is Sardinian http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sardinian_language
Erik Larsson said
My guess is that BOK is one of the Norwegian dialects, Bokmål and that SRD is Sardinian.
Myrina said
BOK would be Bokmal just as NN is Nynorsk – different dialects of Norwegian. SRD would be Sardinian. Answering Piotrek’s earlier question SR is probably Sorbian (that is ‘języki łużyckie’).
David Graber said
For BOK, have a look at the varieties of Norwegian. For SRD, have a look at what islands are around Italy.
Sanja said
Bok is one version of Norwegian called Bokmål, the other one is Nynorsk (her NN), while SRD is not SRD, it is SRB and stays for Serbian.
Sanja said
Sorry, SRD is Sardinian version (i think) 🙂
Salvatore said
SRD = Sardinian language
jfaust said
Bok is “bokmål”- literary Norwegian, which is closer to Danish than the contemporary Norwegian spoken language. Srd must be Sardinian. Not sure why this is on there – by the same standard, you would have to put other Romance languages on this chart, e.g. Sicilian.
Marta said
BOK is Bokmål, one of the two official langauges in Norway. SRD, as I presume, is Sardinian.
Cheers
Holger Lockertsen said
BOK is Norwegian Bokmål http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokm%C3%A5l
NN is Norwegian Nynorsk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nynorsk
Mike Whitcombe said
BOK must be Norwegian Bokmål and SRD – Sardinian…
Ian Johnson said
norwegian bokmal
sardinian
Giubo said
BOK stands for Bokmål (the official written Norwegian language), while SRD stands for Sardinian!
Chris ONeil said
I agree. A legend would be helpful.
I think this is the BOK language: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokmål
and this may be the SRD language: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sardinian_language
Here is a list of all language codes, but they don’t seem to be using this. I just did a search on Germanic languages and Romance languages to get BOK and SRD.
Richard said
I’d also love to see a legend, but I’d guess that BOK and SRD are Bokmål (a form of Norwegian) and Sardinian, respectively. NN, right next to BOK, is probably Nynorsk, the other major form of Norwegian.
Henrik Carlsen said
Bokmål – one of two Norwegian languages. Nynorsk is the other (New Norwegian). The first language dates back to the time, when the Danish king also ruled Norway (untill 1814 (I think – I’m Danish)). Bokmål is closer to Danish, but all Scandinavian languages are rather similar.
AnnaT (@ATainy) said
I’d say BOK stands for Bokmål, one of the two types of Norwegian spoken today. (The other one is Nynorsk, which I’m guessing is the NN on the chart.)
Bag said
Same for me… De même pour moi…
Georges Kanoute said
Just guessing:
SRD = Sardinian
SR = Sorbian (A tiny Slavic minority inside Germany, close to the Polish border. Not to be confused with Serbian!)
BOK = Bokmal (‘classic’ or ‘literary’ form of Norwgian, i.e. Danish orthography for spoken Norwegian)
NN = Nynorsk (the standardised form of actually-spoken Norwegian ‘dialects’ in the west of the country)
I apologise in advance to Norwegians if my description of the linguistic situation is off. I don’t know nearly enough about language politics over there to speak with any authority. The map shows BOK as being distinct from NN but pretty much identical to Danish (like Croatian and Serbian elsewhere in the map). I didn’t know this. Then again, I might be wrong about what BOK and NN are, but I really don’t see what else they could be.
Birgit Holma said
Bokmål ( norwegian) and sardinian I guess 🙂
bob said
BOK = bokmal, older Norwegian, as opposed to NN, nynorsk, I think.
Still would like to see a legend too.
lunicrax said
My guess: Bokmaal (Norwegian has two varieties, nynorsk, likely NN and bokmaal) and Sardinian?
Peter said
Bokmål in Norway and Sardinian in Sardinia.
Ellen Udnes said
BOK is Norwegian, NN as well. BOK is short for BOKMÅL, NN is short for NYNORSK. Norwegian is quite a curiosity, with two different (although quite similar) written languages. All Norwegian students learn to write both languages at school. Shouldn’t be necessesary, since all people in Norway understand each other and it isn’t really a question of different languages. It’s just a few different words and a little grammatical variation. It’s a political question 🙂
tgillieron@yahoo.co.uk said
I think it’s Boksmal – one of the official languages of Norway.
Tom Gillieron said
Sorry, Bokmål, the official written Norwegian.
Tom Gillieron said
Sorry, Bokmål, the official written Norwegian.
Daniel said
My guess would be Bokmål and Sardinian.
Richard Hussong said
I’d say BOK is Bokmål, one of two variants of Norwegian, the other being Nynorsk (NN). SRD is most likely Sardinian, being so close to Italian.
arnejohanisaksen said
BOK is Norwegian Bokmål, which is the biggest out of two official Norwegian languages. The NN close to this is the other Norwegian language, Nynorsk, which is the minor of these stwo languages. SRD is Sardinian, used on the island of Sardinia, which is also very close to Italian.
Pol said
BOK stands for Bokmal Norwegian (the other Nynorsk variant listed as NN), while SRD is Sard, spoken in Sardinia.
I am not surprised by the absence of Basque (I guess it’s not even an Indoeuropean language), but I find it strange not to see Occitan considered.. :S
jordsdottir said
BOK is Norwegian (Bokmål as opposed to NN which is Nynorsk) Sorry but I don’t know SRD.
Paul Spitzer said
Bok = Bokmal, (sorry I don’t have the “a” with the little circle on it), one form of Norwegian.
Srd = Sardinian
Rune Norheim said
BOK is Bokmål (Norwegian)
SRD I think must be Rhetoroman
Daniel Risa said
They’re Bokmål and Sardinian. Sardinian is the language most similar to latin.
Bryan the Beerviking said
At a guess, it’ll be Bokmal (the majority Norwegian language, closely related to Danish – NN is the other Norwegian language, Nynorsk) and Sardinian (“the most conservative of the Romance languages in terms of phonology”, says Wikipedia).
Ryan C said
I believe BOK is Norwegian (Bokmal) and SRD Sardinian.
Bogdan Nicolae said
BOK = Bokmal; NN=Nynorsk – both are two norwegian dialects (there is no “standard” Norwegian)
SRD = Sardinian
JpaJ said
BOK=bokmal, Norwegian
SRD=sardinian
Gilad Singer said
BOK and NN are two dialects of Norwegian: Bokmål (literally “book-language”) and Nynorsk (New Norwegian).
SRD: maybe Sardinian?
anon said
my guess: bok = bokmal (nn = nynorsk), srd= sardinian
Emy Canale said
Srd refers to Sardinian, the language spoken inSardinia, a large Italian island. Sardinian is not an Italian dialect, but a language, and its Latin roots are very evident, even more than in Italian itself.
Emy Canale said
Bok refers to Bokmål, an official written standard for the Norwegian language, alongside Nynorsk.
Chris Heinz (@ChrisJHeinz) said
Very nice, thanks!
carla said
SRD Sardinia, sardo is a language, as romano of Rome
.
carla said
excuse me! answer is not for you!
sorinf said
sardinian and bokmal
botva said
BOK – bokmål – danish-norwegian, or norwegian-danish 🙂
SRD – sardinian
botva said
sorry, it’s not for you
George Pringle said
SRB = Serbian? BOK = something Northern Germany?
Tropylium said
What’s the metric of distance used here? I’m wondering where the Baltic-Hungarian lines come from. Those two groups aren’t even in contact (nor have they been in the past), it’s about as unexpected as seeing, I dunno, Danish-Albanian would be.
Come to think of it, Dutch-Greek looks kinda out of place as well.
Oscar said
Not that strange, we do have (adapted) Greek words in the Dutch language.
Another remarkable fact is that although Dutch is pretty close to German, there are not that many Germans that understand Dutch but a lot of Dutch people understand (or speak) German.
Kurt said
Bok is bokmal (Norwegian), srd is Sardinian, basque is a language spoken in Europe but it is not part of the European languages families, it is an isolate.
Traders Joking - Page 12 said
[…] Lexical Distance Among the Languages of Europe This chart shows the lexical distance — that is, the degree of overall vocabulary divergence — among the major languages of Europe. The size of each circle represents the number of speakers for that language. Circles of the same color belong to the same language group. All the groups except for Finno-Ugric (in yellow) are in turn members of the Indo-European language family. English is a member of the Germanic group (blue) within the Indo-European family. But thanks to 1066, William of Normandy, and all that, about 75% of the modern English vocabulary comes from French and Latin (ie the Romance languages, in orange) rather than Germanic sources. As a result, English (a Germanic language) and French (a Romance language) are actually closer to each other in lexical terms than Romanian (a Romance language) and French. So why is English still considered a Germanic language? Two reasons. First, the most frequently used 80% of English words come from Germanic sources, not Latinate sources. Those famous Anglo-Saxon monosyllables live on! Second, the syntax of English, although much simplified from its Old English origins, remains recognizably Germanic. The Norman conquest added French vocabulary to the language, and through pidginization it arguably stripped out some Germanic grammar, but it did not ADD French grammar. […]
Julia said
No Occitan? I figured it would be joined with Catalan.
matt said
BOK = bokmaal = Norwegian
NN = nynorsk = Norwegian
both are recognized official languages in Norway.
matt said
SRD = Sardinian
Ay S. said
Are you sure that the grammatical simplification from old Germanic is really “pidginization”?
dm said
I knew it.
Hungarians really ARE aliens!
Julius said
@Laura
I guess it’s Bokmål (Norwegian) and the Sardinian language.
Jean-Marc said
The Basque language is lacking. It’s spoken by more than 1 million people, including spanish provinces, and isnt indo-european. It was probably spoken in south of France and northenrn Spain before all of these.
Julius said
By the way: a version with ISO 639-3 codes would be nice.
Zsolt said
Sr – could be Sorbian?
Bok – that’s Bokmål, the traditional version of Norwagian (as compared to Nynorsk – NN).
Srd – could that be Sardinian?
Renton said
SRD is Sardinian
Lexical Distance Among the Languages of Europe | levin's linkblog said
[…] See on Scoop.it – levin’s linkblog: Knowledge ChannelThis chart shows the lexical distance — that is, the degree of overall vocabulary divergence — among the major languages of Europe. The size of each circle represents the number of speakers …See on elms.wordpress.com […]
Carl said
Seem to be missing Turkish on there. It is a fairly major language in Europe.
Adina Gabriela Dedu said
BOK stand for Bokmål. In Norway 2 related official written languages are being spoken: Bokmål (translated “book tongue”) and Nynorsk (translated “new Norwegian”).
SRD stands for Sardinian- the language spoken in Sardinia
mr sandman said
Luxembourg is missing 😦 stupid graph
Gabor said
Why is Hungarian closer to Ukrain than Serbian or Slovak? I am pretty sure there is some slight Turkish connection. Bty where is Turkish? Similarly why alban is connected with the furthest south Slavic sountry Slovenia instead of the closest Serbian, or Macedonian? It is almost sure in these cases it is the common subset of those groups that influenced instead of a specific member.
Aggelos said
There is no Macedonian language. This country that says they are Macedonians is mostly Serbians, Bulgarians, Albanians and Greeks. Their language is Slavic and they didn’t even live in this area when the real Macedonian race (part of the Greek nation) conquered the world.
Anna Holmén said
I would guess “BOK” stands for “bokmål”, which is the name of one of the 2 types of Norwegian. “SRD” – Sardinian?
P. Chambert-Protat (@chaprot) said
Very nice map ! But I’d like a legend too : I’m not sure what language I should see behind some of the abbreviations… Thanks !
Rasmus Underbjerg Pinnerup said
@Laura:
Bokmål and Sardinian 🙂
Juha Uski said
Laura, BOK must mean “bokmål” whereas “NN” stands for “nynorsk”. SRD, I suppose stands for Sardinian.
Anonymous said
[…] […]
nfrankel said
Basque is unique in that it bears no similarity to any known language, it is an orphan language (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basque_language)
jabinskyi said
BOK is Norwegian Bokmal, and SRD, I assume, is Sardinian.
Musungu said
BOK is Bokmål, one of the two official standards of the Norwegian language (the other one, marked here as NN, is Nynorsk). The status of Silesian as a separate language is debated, so Sr is probably Sorbian, a small Western Slavic language spoken in eastern Germany, while I’d guess SRD is Sardinian.
pjt said
Laura, I assume BOK is bokmål and NN is nynorsk (the official written standards of Norwegian). SRD must be Sardinian, and I suppose SR is Sorbian (Wendish, spoken in eastern Germany), but why is it shortened like that? The author would have done well to stick to ISO 639.
Spyros said
SRD stands for Sardinia and BOK stands for Bokmål Norwegian
Sim said
Polish, unlike many Slavik languages, has an incredible number of Latin words which is not reflected in the graph at all
Martino Faedda said
SRD is Sardinian (and Sardinia is my land). I think its more near to spanish and catalan then Italian. (sorry for my terrible english)
Fotoa said
Basque??????
Duncan Chapple said
BOK is Bokmal Norwegian; DSH is Danish.
Jeffrey Shallit said
BOK is probably Bokmal, one of the two versions of Norwegian. SRD is probably Sardinian.
Luca Tognoli said
SRD I think it refers to Sardinian language. I know it’s considered an autonomous language and I think it’s sardinian since it’s linked to ITA and Catalàn. But a legend would be very useful (I also missing Rm and PRO
Nice but.. said
Once again SVK and SLO got mixed up
Slovenia (SLO) has something over 2 mil. people while Slovakia (SVK) has 5,5.. Thus the circles does not size appropriately.
Andrew Treloar said
Based on context, I infer that
NN = NyNorsk
BOK = BokMål
SRD = Sardinian
But I am highly sceptical about the Finno-Ugric results – they aren’t even Indo-European!
Flanders said
BOK is Bokmål, or standard Norwegian. It think
clau said
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4f/IndoEuropeanTree.svg and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISO_639-1_codes
Rm is Romansh, the fourth national language of Switzerland (would however be missing Friulian and Ladin in Italy). Fri probably Frisian, spoken in Northern Germany. Pro = Provençale, Srd = Sardinian, Fa seems to be Faorese.
A table would really be helpful, as there seems not to be a clear abbreviation system…
Georgi said
The only mistake is that there is no independent Macedonian language, it is made by the Serbian nationalists after the second World War, to make it much different fron the Bulgarian.
Aggelos said
The biggest mistake is that there is no such a lamguage because the real Macedonians are a Greek race and Alexander the Great was speaking Greek.
John F said
I’m assuming BOK is Bokmal from Norway, which as the diagram shows is very close to Danish. Is SRD Sardinian? Spain is much more linguistically diverse than I realised if GLC is Galician and CAT is Castilian. I didn’t realise there were so many speakers of Frisian.
I’d also love to see Arabic, Hebrew and the Indian Subcontinent’s languages plotted alongside these. Don’t stop there! Plot them all!!!
Cluny said
GLC is Galician. It is touching Portuguese because they were born as the same language, but later differentiated mainly due to political reasons, when Portugal became independent and its “center of gravity” moved south as the “Reconquista” advanced.
CAT is not Castilian, it’s Catalan. “Castilian” is in fact the real name of what you call “Spanish” in English, because it is the language originated in the Castile region of Spain, which (again for political reasons) along the centuries became established as the “lingua-franca” in the whole territory of Spain. Only a percent of Spaniards (about 75%) have it as their mother tongue, but all of us are required to understand and speak it fluently.
David said
Legend with ISO 639-1 (and occasionally 639-2) language codes and ISO 3166-1 country codes. I’ve had to guess a couple of times
ALBANIAN
ALB = Albanian (sq-AL)
BALTIC
LAT = Latvian (lv-LV)
LIT = Lithuanian (lt-LT)
CELTIC
BRE = Breton (br-FR)
GA = (Scottish?) Gaelic (gd-GB)
IR = Irish (Gaelic) (ga-IE)
WE = Welsh (cy-GB)
FINNO-UGRIC
EST = Estonian (et-EE)
FIN = Finnish (fi-FI)
HUN = Hungarian (hu-HU)
GERMANIC
BOK = Norwegian Bokmål (nb-NO)
DSH = Danish (da-DA)
DUT = Dutch (nl-NL)
ENG = English (en-GB)
FA = Faroese (fo-FO)
FRI = (West) Frisian (fy-NL)
GER = German (de-DE)
ICE = Icelandic (is-IS)
NN = Norwegian Nynorsk (nn-NO)
SWE = Swedish (sv-SE)
ROMANCE
CAT = Catalan (ca-ES)
FRE = French (fr-FR)
GLC = Galician (gl-ES)
ITA = Italian (it-IT)
POR = Portuguese (pt-PT)
PRO = (Provence) Occitan (oc-FR)
RM = Romansh (rm-CH)
ROM = Romanian (ro-RO)
SPA = Spanish (es-ES)
SRD = Sardinian (sc-IT)
SLAVIC
BLR = Belarusian (be-BY)
BUL = Bulgarian (bg-BG)
CRO = Croatian (hr-HR)
CZE = Czech (cs-CZ)
MA = Macedonian (mk-MK)
POL = Polish (pl-PL)
RUS = Russian (ru-RU)
SLO = Slovenian (sl-SI)
SR = Sorbian (wen-DE) – technically regarded as a language group consisting of Upper and Lower Sorbian
SRB = Serbian (sr-RS)
SVK = Slovak (sk-SK)
UKR = Ukranian (uk-UA)
Le_Chat_Noir said
A beautiful illustration, indeed! Thank you, Teresa and Dr. Tyshchenko! To reply now, if I may: “Laura Blumenthal”: BOK stands for Bokmål (literally meaning “book tongue”), the preferred written standard of Norwegian and similar to Danish, while SRD stands for the Sardinian language. To “St. Izzy O’Cayce”: I respectfully disagree: among the Romance languages, the best to start with is Latin for the basis (vocabulary and roots), then continue with Romanian (that’s a tough one!) and French or Portuguese. Why is that? Well, a fluent Romanian and/or Aromanian speaker would rather easily understand Corsican, Sardinian, Romansh (Rhaeto-Romanian), Italian and Spanish (particularly the Catalan dialect). To “Piotrek”: SR stands for the Sorbian languages in the Lusatia region of eastern Germany, and are closely related to Polish, Czech and Slovak. To “Jonathon”: the Basque language (Euskara) is a language isolate, a remaining descendant of the pre-Indo-European languages of Western Europe, and probably dates to the Stone Age or Neolithic period; otherwise, in Basque there are only a few words borrowed from Spanish and French.
Dídac Busquets said
@Le_Chat_Noir: just a correction. Catalan IS NOT a dialect of Spanish (or any other language). It’s a language on its own, having itself many dialects.
Oliver Ding said
@Laura: Bokmal (Norwegian) and Sardinian, I suppose.
Mick Woods said
BOK= bokmål (norwegian system of writing, spelling, semi-dialect) as opposed to nynorsk. SRD could well be Sardinian.
Maxus said
Also, Sami is missing.
FRI = Frisian,
BOK= Bokmal (one of two Norwegian languages, closer to Danish) and
NN = New Norwegian (the other one).
axel said
What about basque?????? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basque_language
egyeske said
SRD is the language spoken in Sardinia, I think.
mike said
For two blog posts, borrowed research, and a needlessly hostile “about” section, this blog is getting some decent traffic. Good work.
Cunnilinguist said
I personally think that this chart has a lot of mistakes. But I’m focus “just” on these I really know, because I come from Slovenia. Our nation (SLO) has population of 2 million and Slovakia (Svk) has population over 5 million, but the circles’ diameter don’t represent that – is it possible that Tereza Elms switched us just like many people do? I think so 😛 The other thing … slovenian language is on this chart connected to croatian, but not to serbian!? And the distance between croatian and czech should be smaller than the distance between slovenian and czech. Also, why is russian so nicely connected to almost every slavic language but not SLO and CRO? And why isn’t there a connection between CZE and POL??? Oh, gosh … :S 😀
Vlad Iorga said
Sardinian and Bokmal (Norway).
Wendy said
Reblogged this on Kiss the Translator and commented:
Manca l’euskera…
Inge Henriksen said
@Laura: I believe BOK is Norwegian Bokmaal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokm%C3%A5l I’m guessing NN is Neo Norwegian http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nynorsk and SRD is Sardinian http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sardinian_language
Inge Henriksen said
Is not Neo Norwegian (NN) more closely related to Dansih(DSH) than Norwegian Bokmaal(BOK)?
James said
Sr is probably Sorbian
BOK is Bokmål – standard written Norwegian
SRD must be Sardinian
Vaughan said
Yes, can someone help with the abbreviations? BOK has a similar number of speakers to Danish, Swedish or Dutch, and looks too big to be an obscure minority language (it’s not Afrikaans, is it? Come to think of it, where IS Afrikaans? Very similar to Dutch…).
Jakob said
@Laura
BOK: Norwegian Bokmål as opposed to NN: Norwegian Nynorsk. Two standardized forms of written Norwegian, BOK is heavily influenced by Danish, whereas NN is based on North Western Norwegian dialects.
SRD must be Sardinian.
Closet Linguist said
I would presume BOK to mean Bokmal Norwegian, SRD to Sardinian and Sr to be Sorbian. Is there a connection between languages labelled in all-caps and ones which only have a capital initial? (I suspected them to be “official language of a country” vs others, but surely Estonian [Est] must be the official language of Estonia — so there goes that theory!)
Also to St. Izzy O’ Cayce: This is only the lexical distance, meaning how much history of vocabulary the languages share amongst each other. So yes, Italian words look most “average” amongst Romance language. A valuation of “utalitarian” has to take into account other factors as well, complexity of grammar, syntax and pronunciation, geographical proximity, number of speakers worldwide and in a restricted geographical neighbourhood, historical relations etc. All these parameters are dependent on where the learner is situated, what their native language is, which other languages they already know and how proficient they are in them (in order to make meaningful connections between their foreign languages). When again taking the average over all of these parameters, then Spanish, or more precisely Castilian, fares much better, as more people are much more like to have a Spanish-speaking country nearby rather than being close to Italy (being close to both is tie-broken by the fact that there are 406 million native speakers plus another 80 million non-native speakers versus Italian’s total of 60 + 25 million or so). Just my two cents.
Disclaimer: I am not a professional linguist, but here’s my interpretation of the abbreviations by language group.
ALBANIAN: Albanian (ALB).
BALTIC: Latvian (Lat), Lithuanian (LIT).
CELTIC: Breton (Br), Irish Gaelic(Ir), Gaelic/Scottish Gaelic (Ga), Welsh (We).
FINNO-UGRIC: Estonian (Est), Finnish (FIN), Hungarian (HUN).
GERMANIC: Bokmål (BOK), Danish (DSH), Dutch (DUT), English (ENG), Faroese (Fa), Frisian (Fri) [Rem: unclear which variant, maybe all of them], German (GER), Icelandic (Ice), Nynorsk (NN), Swedish (SWE).
GREEK: Greek (GRK)
ROMANCE: Catalan (CAT), French (FRE), Galician (GLC), Italian (ITA), Portuguese (POR), Franco-Provençal (PRO), Romansh (Rm), Romanian (ROM), Sardinian (SRD), Castilian Spanish (SPA).
SLAVIC: Belarusian (BLR), Bulgarian (BUL), Croation (CRO), Czech (CZK), Macedonian (Ma), Polish (POL), Russian (RUS), Slovenian (SLO), Slovakian (SVK), Sorbian (Sr), Serbian (SRB), Ukrainian (UKR).
Hitch-Hikers Handbook said
That’s interesting, but how should we interpret Lithuanian standing between German and Polish? Of course, taking into consideration the geographical proximity, these languages must have some vocabulary in common, but I’m not sure whether putting LIT between those two languages is entirely correct.
astheart said
I don’t think it is correct either.
Søren Harder said
BOK must be Bokmål i.e. the Norwegian dialect that comes from the Danish-Norwegian spoken in the cities before NN, New Norwegian was recreated from the more original rural dialects (at the time when Denmark lost Norway to Sweden). SRD must be Sardinian. Some of the links are spurious: Irish Portuguese, Dutch Greek. Why is (Scots) Gaelic not linked to English and why are the other germanic languages not related? (Viking vocabulary in Irish e.g.).
sheaseer said
Ah, I see that Finno-Ugric Hungarian out on the wing !
Fenno said
Bok = Norsk bokmål
Srd = sardininan
But yeah, I had to google some of the languages too.
Oleksandr Hudyma said
Very good and interesting! Thanks a lot!
Few points:
I believe there should be a strong link between catalan and provensal since in middle ages it was a single language.
Another point of confusion is a number of speakers of Slovak compared to Slovenian – seems that circles should be changed.
dipdowel said
Reblogged this on ::Keep in Dutch::.
Sebo said
greek is foreveralone
Lori Cole said
Euskera?
Daniel said
An attempt at a small legend:
Srd = Sardinian
Bok = Bokmål (regular Norwegian)
NN = Nynorsk (new Norwegian)
Fri = Frisian
Sr = Sorbian (unsure about this one, but it seems reasonable)
Rm = Romansh (again, not sure, but considering it’s between French and Italian it seems likely)
Pro = Occitan (often known as Provencal in English)
KBN said
SRD may be Sardinian. BOK is ‘bokmål’, that is, standard Norwegian
Peter said
There are approx. 5,5 mil. innhabitants living in Slovakia and almost 5 mil. Slovaks living abroad, so it should be in bigger circle, and Slovenia should be in smaller. Also, Cze and Pol should be connected with (<25) line.
Cunnilinguist said
They always make a mess with Slovenia and Slovakia … too similar name, too similar flag 😉
Kaa said
It’s not published in Russian, but in Ukrainian.
Martin Vidner said
Sr: Sorbian, Bok: Bokmal, Srd: Sardinian(?)
A. said
Albanian connected to Slavic (Slovene)? Couldn’t be more off.
Goran said
@ Laura Blumenthal BOK is Bokmål, one of the standard variants of Norwegian, and SRD is Sardinian.
Nikolai Kiryukhin said
BOK=bokmaal and SRD stands for Sardinian, i believe
Maszyna said
My guesses:
Sr – Sorbian (spoken in Lusatia)
BOK – Norwegian Bokmål (as opposed to NN – Norwegian Nynorsk)
SRD – Sardinian
niefpaarschoenen said
Did you make this chart yourself? May I ask how? The number of Slovak speaking people is more than the number of Slovenian speaking people, so I’m wondering why the circle is smaller?
Also, according to my Russian colleague, the book was written in Ukrainian, not Russian…
Pretty cool though that this chart is becoming viral 6 years after you posted it :-).
Cunnilinguist said
They always make a mess with Slovenia and Slovakia … too similar name, too similar flag 😉
Sabrina S said
@Laura Blumenthal:
SRD = sardinian
BOK = bokmål (one of the two forms of Norwegian, the other is Nynorsk = NN in this chart).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokm%C3%A5l
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nynorsk
Csudi said
Something is not right here. Hungarian is very very distant from grammar point of view, but in fact, only 10% of the vocabulary is original Hungarian. If the chart shows origins of words, it should be much closer all the three major groups.
Fernán González said
Laura, I think BOK refers to Bokmål and SRD to Sardinian.
Carl Davidson said
Basque is unrelated to any of them. One theory is that the Basque were the first Europeans, then retreated into their mountains as others arrived later. Basque has a few word in common with both Aztec and Finn-Urgic, so there’s a puzzle for you.
Mia said
How did you determine the number of speakers? Slovenian has MORE than 3.1 million speakers (in a country with a population of 2 million), whereas Slovak has LESS than 3.1 million speakers (in a country with a population of 5.4 million people). Also, the lexical distance between Slovenian and Albanian should be higher, I think.
Cunnilinguist said
They obviously mistook Slovakia for Slovenia or vice-versa … nothing new :p
But – why do you think the lexical distance between Slovenian and Albanian should be higher??? I’m surprised there even is a connection …
Jędrzej Tomasz Flic-Matuszewski herbu Trąbka z Gwizdkiem said
“Sr” is Sorbian.
Jongseong Park said
Here’s the key as far as I can work out:
We: Welsh, Bre: Breton, Ga: (Scottish) Gaelic, Ir: Irish
Eng: English, Ice: Icelandic, Fa: Faroese, NN: Nynorsk (New Norwegian), Bok: (Norwegian) Bokmål, Swe: Swedish, Dsh: Danish, Fri: Frisian, Dut: Dutch, Ger: German
Fin: Finnish, Est: Estonian, Hun: Hungarian
Lat: Latvian, Lit: Lithuanian
Pol: Polish, Sr: Sorbian, Cze: Czech, Svk: Slovak, Slo: Slovenian, Cro: Croatian, Srb: Serbian, Ma: Macedonian, Bul: Bulgarian, Blr: Belarusian, Ukr: Ukrainian, Rus: Russian
Alb: Albanian
Grk: Greek
Rom: Romanian, Srd: Sardinian, Rm: Romansh, Ita: Italian, Cat: Catalan, Spa: Spanish, Glc: Galician, Por: Portuguese, Pro: Provençal, Fre: French
Jędrzej Tomasz Flic-Matuszewski herbu Trąbka z Gwizdkiem said
“Srd” is Sardinian and “Bok” is Norwegian Bokmal.
Anna said
Great chart but some links and languages are missing I think…
Where’s the link between catalan with gallec, portuguese and french… sometimes, catalan it’s lexicaly more closed to gallec or french than to spanish….
And where’s basque? I heard that basque had some links with albanian…
alysonmiers said
Reblogged this on The Monster's Ink and commented:
Oh, look, some porn for language nerds.
I think it’s hilarious how Albanian and Greek are sitting there all alone, like, “Who are all THESE assholes?” Though I also think Albanian would be insulted to hear that it’s lexically closer to the Slavic family than to the Romance family.
George m said
Greek (Modern Greek: ελληνικά [eliniˈka] is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, western Asia Minor, Greece, and the Aegean Islands, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history; other systems, such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary, were previously used.
The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn THE BASIS of the Latin, Cyrillic, Coptic, and many other writing systems.
The Greek language holds an important place in the histories of Europe, the more loosely defined Western world, and Christianity; the canon of ancient Greek literature includes works of monumental importance and influence for the future Western canon such as the epic poems Iliad and Odyssey.
Greek was also the language in which many of the foundational texts of Western philosophy, such as the Platonic dialogues and the works of Aristotle, were composed; the New Testament of the Christian Bible was written in Koiné Greek. Together with the Latin texts and traditions of the Roman world, the study of the Greek texts and society of antiquity constitutes the discipline of classics.
Greek was a widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world and beyond during classical antiquity and would eventually become the official parlance of the Byzantine Empire.
Greek roots are often used to coin new words for other languages;
Greek and Latin are the predominant sources of international scientific vocabulary.
(WIKIPEDIA)
heidilnd said
Reblogged this on london is my modern babylon. and commented:
just to prove my point to everyone again – estonia is NOTHING like russian!
Peter Adler said
My guess is: Sr = Sorbic
“BOK” certainly is Norwegian “Bokmål”
SRD presumably Sardinian
Dimitris said
its bokmal (norwegian) and sardenian
maryxmas said
it was published IN UKRAINIAN.
Know How said
Where the hell is Turkish?
Dobroslav said
there is no Macedonian as there is no Bosnian and Montenegrian!!!
Chris Bal said
SRD – Sardinian
BOK – Standard Norwegian
Kiko said
I think SRD may be Sardinian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sardinian_language) and BOK may be Bockmål Norwegian in order to distinguish it from Nynorsk Norwegian. I also think Sr is Silesian due to its relation with Polish and Czech (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silesian_language) My doubt is PRO in the Romance Languages, may it be Occitan?
Rick said
SRD is likely Sardinian. I can’t figure out BOK. Anyone got an insight?
Vuperi said
What is the original work of Tishchenko? He had not a book in 1999 by name Metatheory of Linguistics. (Published in Russian). Hier are his works: http://www.langs.com.ua/contacts/1/Bibliography.htm
1999:
80. Морфологічна структура сучасної перської лексики // ІІІ сходознавчі читання А.Кримського. Тези міжнар. наук. конф. – К. (0,2 д.а.). Співавтор О. Бєдов.
81. Службові дієслова у підсистемі дієслів перської мови // ІІІ сходознавчі читання А.Кримського. Тези міжнар. наук. конф. – К. (0,2 д.а.). Співавтор А. Півторак.
82. Лінгвістичний навчальний музей // Київс. нац. ун-т ім. Т. Шевченка. Довідник. – К.: КНУ. (0,2 д.а.).
83. Лекції з генетичного мовознавства (Передісторія мовлення. Палеосигніфіка. Історична синтактика.) – К.: КНУ. (3,0 д.а.).
Marcus said
BOK = probably Bokmal and SRD Sardinian
cyberj said
There is a mistake in the size of the Slovak and Slovenian language speakers
astheart said
I think Slovak is okay, but I cannot believe there’s so many Slovenian speakers as there are only 2 mil inhabitants in Slovenia, and only about 83% of them are Slovenians.
astheart said
Sorry, “there are only 2 mil…”
Cunnilinguist said
They always make a mess with Slovenia and Slovakia … too similar name, too similar flag, nothing new 😉
Joakim Ringblom said
Laura Blumenthal: BOK almost certainly stands for “Bokmål”, which perhaps is more known as standard Norwegian/”Dano-Norwegian”. It is slightly different from New Norwegian (NN). Both are spoken in Norway. As a non-linguisticly skilled Swede I would guessed that they are just diffferent dialects, but apparently the real linguistics sees it otherways. I have no idea what SRD is though.
Rollo said
Where is the Basque language?
czg said
I have some doubts about Albanian so close to Slovenian (!?) and closer to Romanian than from Italian (not to mention Turkish)
Joni said
The Albanian language is an Indo-European language in a branch by itself, sharing its branch with no other extant language.
Gabriela said
Romanian shares HUGE active vocabulary with Albanians thorugh thracians. Romanian was highly influenced by Latin, not by Italian EVEN IF they are very similar.
Sceptical Badger said
I know it says ‘major’ languages of Europe, but Manx and Cornish could also be in there with the other Celtic languages
Sorin Pop said
Why, are the major ones?…
Someone said
SRD = Sardinian
BOK = Bokmal (classic Norwegian)
Magnus Markling said
I would assume that
NN = Nynorsk
BOK = Bokmål
edesorban said
Fascinating! Clearly illustrates my experience with Hungarian!
Alastair Reid said
BOK is probably a variation of Norwegian. Often it is one of the font variations you can get on a computer. From Wikipaedia:
There are two official forms of written Norwegian – Bokmål (literally “book tongue”) and Nynorsk (literally “new Norwegian”). The Norwegian Language Council is responsible for regulating the two forms, and recommends the terms “Norwegian Bokmål” and “Norwegian Nynorsk” in English. Two other written forms without official status also exist, the major one being Riksmål (“national language”), which is somewhat closer to the Danish language but today is to a large extent the same language as Bokmål. It is regulated by the Norwegian Academy, which translates the name as “Standard Norwegian”. The other being Høgnorsk (“High Norwegian”) that is a more purist form of Nynorsk, which maintains the language in an original form as given by Ivar Aasen and rejects most of the reforms from the 20th century. This form of Nynorsk has very limited use.
Fernanlee said
where is valencian language in that network?. This is one big mistake. A second mistake, I don’t see a link between french and catalan… why?
Dídac Busquets said
@Fernanlee: well, I know this is a rather more political issue than a linguistic one, but IMHO (and the opinion of most of the linguists) Valencian and Catalan is the same language. The differences between what is spoken in Catalonia and what is spoken in Valencia are so minimal that they are (should) be considered as being dialects (whether the “overall” language should be called Catalan, Valencian, CatValan, that’s also a political thing). Not to mention including the Balearic dialects…
Marko said
Bok – bokmal? Srd – Sardinian?
Any comments on Albanian – Slovenian (?) connection? That seems *very* odd.
Jester said
Spamming ‘what about Basque’ won’t add it to the diagram as data is just not there. If you want to make a new one (with Basque language), please do so.
niklosz said
What about kashubian language?
Kefalo said
I believe Sr is Sorbian. SRD-Sardinian? No idea what BOk is.
Cédric said
I’d be interested in any reference describing the methodology (how — and with what data — the inter-languages distances have been calculated). Is everything only described in the original publication, in Russian? Any translation out there? Is it a book or a paper? Cheers!
Elise said
Where is Basque?
CgX said
SRD is Sardinian 🙂
Maury Incen said
@ Laura Blumenthal: BOK = Bokmaaal, the oldest of the two languages spoken in Norway (the other one is called Nynorsk = New Norwegian). SRD = Sardinian, a language spoken in Sardinia (one of Italy’s biggest islands). 🙂 Hope that helps!
Paul said
Bok = Bokmål (Norwegian) ; NN = Nynorsk (Norwegian) But I’m having troule with Fri.
Paul said
…SRD has to be Sardinian…?
Sergi Monreal said
Dear Ms Elms,
Respectfully requesting to review the links of CATalan. It is very similar to PROvençal, there should be a black continuous line. I would like to rememeber that they were considered almost the same language in the upper medieval age. However, no line joins them in the graphic today. Similarly, there should be a line between CATalan and FREnch.
Regards,
Sergi Monreal
kata-ana said
To Piotrek:
SR refers to Sorbian
To Laura Blumenthal:
BOK refers to Norwegian Bokmål – SRD refers to Sardinian
Lexical Distance Among the Languages of Europe | Stan Taylor said
[…] Per the accompanying article: […]
Paul said
…Ah, Fri must be Frisian.
Stuart said
@Chris – At a guess, BOK is probably Bokmål and SRD Sardinian.
Jonah Shepp said
Bok = Bokmål. SRD = Sardinian. I think Sr = Sorbian.
Seb said
I would like a legend too, but I think BOK is book Norwegian as opposed to Neo Norsk which is the spoken tongue, SRD is Sardinian? Rom is Romanian, but what is Rm?
liburni said
Albanian,the language of gods
Philip said
interesting diagram ! why doesn’t it show ROMANI / ROMANES ? there are at least 6-8 Million Roma people living in Europe so I don’t think you can exclude them from your considerations. I mean Iceland has 320thousand inhabitants which is 25 times less than Roma people all over Europe.
Archaeologia Amphibia said
This is wrong…
John Doe said
It would be nice to see the Turkish language
tom said
I believe BOK refers to bokmal, or book tongue, the written language of Norway, as opposed to NN or Nynorsk
Chris said
Wracking my brains but I can’t come up with a Germanic language spoken by 3 million plus people that could be signified by BOK. Surely not Afrikaans, given its lexical distance from Dutch and proximity to Danish and the other Norse languages.
Dylan Thurston said
NN and BOK are presumably Nynorsk and Bokmål, respectively.
Roslyn Raney said
BOK = bokmaal, a version of Norwegian. SRD is probably Sardinian
Ricardo Silveira said
Why is Irish connected to Português instead of Gallego?Both modern gallego and portuguese descend from the same gallego-portugues medieval language, in that sense why isn’t gallego also connected to irish?
cristina said
” As a result, English (a Germanic language) and French (a Romance language) are actually closer to each other in lexical terms than Romanian (a Romance language) and French”.
What sources did you use for this information? My native language is Romanian and I’m fluent in both English and French and I can assure you that this information is totally inaccurate, you can’t even compare English and Romanian in terms of Latin terms
Séa said
Where is Klingon? Where is glossolalia? Where is Esperanto?
Oh that’s right, like Basque, they are not from the Indo-Eurpoean family, and so are not connected to major European languages.
It is not part of some campaign to ignore all things Basque. Basque just doesn’t happen to be connected to other languages. There are no dots in the graph all on their own.
Imagine a dot with BAS, not connected to any other dot…adds nothing to the graph.
Clearly this piece of research was meant to politically define Europe, and if you are not present you obviously don’t count…lol
Do you honestly expect someone that does research to cover absolutely every possibility, or is it not acceptable to do some research which covers the ‘major’ languages or Europe?
Also FRI is likely Frisian (Netherlands / German direction)
catbert836 said
A legend for the chart (I’m pretty knowledgeable about languages, however of course any mistakes are mine)
Germanic: Eng = English, Ger = German, Dut = Dutch, Swe = Swedish, Dsh = Danish, Ice = Icelandic (obviously). Less obviously: Fri = Frisian, Bok = Norwegian (Bokmal), NN = Nowegian (Nyenorsk), Fa = Faroese
Romance: Por = Portuguese, Spa = Spanish, Ita = Italian, Fre = French (obviously). Less obvious: Rm = Romanian, Cat = Catalan, Srd = Sardian, Pro = Provencal, Glc = Galician
Celtic: Bre = Breton, We = Welsh, Ir = Irish Gaelic and Ga = Scots Gaelic
Baltic: Lat = Latvian, Lit = Lithuanian
Finno-Ugric: Fin = Finnish, Est = Estonian, Hun = Hungarian
Slavic: Rus = Russian, Ukr = Ukranian, Pol = Polish, Bul = Bulgarian, Cro = Croatian, Srb = Serbian, Cze = Czech (obviously). Less obvious: Slo = Slovene, Svk = Slovak, Ma = Macedonian, Blr = Byelorussian/White Russian, Sr = Sorbian.
Arturo Malvestito said
It’s Belarusian, not Byelorussian or White Russian. The latter is a political movement against Bolsheviks in Russia, the former is totally offensive and at least 20 years outdated.
Kalle said
BOK=Bokmål=Norewegian (NN=Nynorsk), SRD=Sardinian
Soulios Christos said
I find it very interesting! Where is Turkish language? I think that also belongs to the Finno-Ugric arow!
Vuperi said
This is Tishchenko’s original in Ukrainian:
http://nado.znate.ru/%D0%A2%D0%B8%D1%89%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%BA%D0%BE_%D0%9A%D0%BE%D0%BD%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B0%D0%BD%D1%82%D0%B8%D0%BD_%D0%9D%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%BB%D0%B0%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%87#link4
“После защиты докторской диссертации на тему “Метатеория языкознания” (1992) принял предложение ректората возглавить кафедру теории и практики восточных языков, впоследствии реорганизована в кафедру восточной филологии, из которой 1995 выделилась кафедра Ближнего Востока. Заведовал кафедрой 9 лет. С 2001 года К. М. Тищенко является заведующим и ведущим научным сотрудником основанного им 1992 Лингвистического учебного музея.
2. Научная деятельность
2.1. Метатеория языкознания” (Ukrainian: movoznastva) 1992 (sic!)
Ian said
I suspect NN and BOK are the two variants of Norwegian (Nynorsk and Bokmål) but I’m at a loss with SRD…
Ian said
Sardinian maybe?
Davide said
Most of languages spoken in Italy are missing… And it’s a pity because, for examples, Gallo-Italic languages are a bridge between Italian and the languages spoken in France and Spain… And moreover the border between West and East Romania crosses along the Gothic line La Spezia-Rimini (or more exactly Massa-Sinigallia)…
ogodon said
Is Basque just off-chart for difference?
Laura, SRD must be Sardinian, I can’t figure out what BOK is…
anne mcd said
BOK = Bokmål Norwegian; SRD = Sardinian.
Mohammad Magout said
The relationship between English and French is similar to the relationship between Persian and Arabic. Persain (an Indo-European lranian language) has absorbed a lot of Arabic vocabulary thanks to the Islamic conquest. Around 40-50% of Persian vocabulary comes from Arabic. Persian syntax, though, still retains its original Iranian features.
Gregory F. Todd said
To Laura – yeah, I can’t find the legend either. “Srd” I will guess is Sardinian. FA is spoken on the Faroe Islands. Maybe this for BOK: “As established by law and governmental policy, there are two official forms of written Norwegian – Bokmål (literally “book tongue”) and Nynorsk (literally “new Norwegian”)”.
Not complete, but a list of abbreviations here: http://www.mathguide.de/info/tools/languagecode.html
John D. Nugent said
Simply amazing that Afrikaans with four million speakers, in a very important country, is somehow forgotten as a Germanic language……………………. and the Boers are being slowly murdered! But hey, who cares? http://www.democratic-republicans.us/white-south-african-tragedy
Charlie Alpers said
I’d be interested to see Yiddish and Hebrew represented
Carlo Persiani said
SRD should be Sardinian (and Corse) isn’t it? And Basque must be quite outdoor, here.
Carlo Persiani said
Replying to myself, for the basque friends. Not being a linguist, nevertheless I think that the most ancient european language (basque) has no real ties with the Indoeuropean group and for this reason the original author did not put it in this diagram.
Emelie said
Basque isn’t in because it’s not considered part of any linguistic group, due to its origins.
Sebastià Giralt said
It is not correct regarding Catalan, which is the closest language to Occitan (Pro) and closer to French than Spanish and probably Italian. It should be placed among Spanish, Occitan (Pro) – French, and Italian. Therefore, its central situation makes it the most suitable to learn all the Romance languages.
Emelie said
@Laura
BOK is Bokmål (one version of Norwegian) and SRD is Sardinian language (spoken on the Isle Sardinia)
kate butling said
SRD is Sardinia, but I also don’t know what BOK is except that it is probably a Belgian area dialect….
Jacobo said
Very cool! Some odd things here… Don’t more people speak Slovak than Slovenian? Aren’t Slovak and Czech very close? And I have read that Catalan and Provencal are closely related. Is there an analogous technique for measuring grammatical distance?
Cunnilinguist said
They always make a mess with Slovenia and Slovakia … too similar name, too similar flag, nothing new 😉
Roger GS said
I’m guessing that Sr is Sorbian and Norwegian is split up into Nynorsk (NN) and Bokmal (Bok).
Robert said
And where are other language? For example from Slavic group: Moravian, Silesian, Kashubian, Ruthenian, Resian, Polesian, Siberian, Lachian, Polabian, Lower Serbian (Lower Lusatian)?
CsendesMark said
The author had to feel awkward about Hungarian, because those lines not really representing the actual facts!
It’s Finno-Ugric, but isn’t related to any Baltic languages.
Hungarian is more closely related to the West Slavic languages (and less to the Eastern Slavic Ukrainian), and also influenced by _German_ Greek and Latin languages, not to mention the Turkish languages.
Pam said
But the French added the grammar for the comparative and superlative of adjectives with two or more syllables that don’t end in y (for example, more intelligent/most intelligent), didn’t they?
Matthew said
@Laur Blementhal Bokmal and Sardinian
piggee said
It is little bit bullshit. Where is the connection between Czech and Slovak language with German?
piggee said
And the connection of Slovak language with Swedish? (have the same grammar)
F said
BOK = Norwegian Bokmal, one of the two standards along with NN=Nynorsk.
SRD = Sardinian
Sr = Sorbian, Slavic minority language(s, there’s an Upper and a Lower) of eastern Germany
I want to see the distance between Romanian and Slavic languages — Romanian has a lot of Slavic vocabulary.
Jon Andersson said
I’m guessing BOK = Bokmål (Norwegian) and SRD = Sardinian? And I agree, there should have been a legend with the map.
xabier said
where is basque??????
Janusz said
Piotrek, no, I suppose it’s Sorbian (Łużycki)
Jaume S. said
Very interesting post and graphic, but there’s two little mistakes. First of all, where’s Basque? (already noted by Jonathon). And second, I’m a native Catalan speaker and I miss a connection line between my language and French, since both are extremely similar. In fact, Catalonian is kind of equidistant between Spanish, Italian and French.
Luljeta Koshi said
Would you mind adding Bosnian language to the Slavic group of languages? Thank you very much.
CoolKoon said
BTW I have to dissent on Hungarian. Sure, it’s pretty far from everything, but vocabulary-wise it has tons of words adopted from German (just like Czech and Slovak BTW) and then Latin, so vocabulary-wise I’d place it much closer to German and the Romance languages. I’d also place it closer to Czech, Slovak and Serbo-Croatian too (and wouldn’t place it anywhere near Ukrainian, to which it’s just as distant as to Russian for instance). I’d also place Slovak closer to Czech, because nothing’s closer to Czech than Slovak (the two languages are mutually pretty much intelligible).
xabier said
Teresa Elms, you should read this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basque_language
Jim Nail said
Nice, but there’s room for quibbling. For instance, on this graph Albanian is as close to Slovenian as English is to Dutch. WTF?
Cunnilinguist said
I’m from Slovenia and I’ll probably never understand that either.
berta said
Where’s Armenian,also ^_^ ? (though looks nice)…
Davit Mirzoyan said
And where is the ARMENIAN language?
interdisciplinarypsych said
BOK is a form of Norwegian (‘Bokmal’). NN is the other form (‘Ny Norsk’). SRD, I think is Sardinian.
Fabio said
The link ITA – GRK is missing!! About 30% of italian words have greek origin, and for sure there’s much more in common between Italian and Greek (Magna Graecia was bassical southern Italy) than between Duch & Greek (????) Lithuan & Greek (???) and French & Greek!
George m said
!!!there must be a link …!
The Coldest Monday Links | Gerry Canavan said
[…] * Lexical Distance Among the Languages of Europe. […]
Marcus Graly said
Could you provide a table for the abbreviations you used for the languages? Alternatively, using ISO codes would make it easier to look up, at least. Thanks!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISO_639-1_codes
Also, Bosnian is now considered a separate language.
Stephan said
As pointed out by a number of other people, it would be good to use a more standardized set of language codes/abbreviations.
One possible source is below; in the language translation and localization industries, we use these codes, and even though they may be new to folks outside of the industry, at the very least we will be able to base our discussions on the same nomenclature:
http://www.science.co.il/Language/Locale-codes.asp
VK said
To Piotrek and Laura: Sr is not Silesian, but Sorbian (spoken in Lusatia, Germany), SRD means Sardinian and BOK Bokmål, one of the two official standards of Norwegian (the second one is Nynorsk, here NN).
ocschwar said
BOK: Bokmal a dialect of Norwegian (the other main one is Nynorsk – NN.)
Srd: Sardinian, which IIRC is the Italian dialect closest to Imperial Latin.
Is Rm Romansch?? Does it really have that many speakers?
Christophe Sims said
English did not ADD French grammar : hopefully, the french grammar being particularly weird, even from latin origin.
Matti Virtanen said
BOK is bokmål, the standard Norwegian, different from NN or nynorsk, spoken upcountry. SRD is most likely sardinian. Sr would be sorbian, the slavic minority language in Germany. But what’s PRO? Besides Basque, others missed are Letzeburgish (Luxemburg), Moselfranken and Karelian.
BrD said
What about Sami languages? Some other small languages are missing too.
Tim said
BOK is Bokmål (one of two written standards for Norwegian, the other being Nynorsk [NN]). I would guess SRD is Sardinian.
Huibdos said
Bok = Norsk(Bokmal) Srd= Sardinia (Italian isle)
Gentos said
What have ALBANIAN with Slavic Language? We have more with Romance, Latin!
Aleks said
Albanians have with NO ONE. IT IS A SEPARATED LANGUAGE. It is the mother language of all Europeans. Even ancient Greeks philosophers spoke Albanian, even today the “ancient Greek language” has nothing to do with the modern (KATHAREVOUSA) Even today Albanians can understand what was written 3000 years ago from Greeks. ( Because was pure Illyrian=Albanian language)
Aggelos said
When the ancient Greeks were using their lkanguage Albanians were just a small group af people living next to the Albanos river over Ukraine. How can their language be the origin of the Greek?!!!!
THE 10 FIRST LINES OF ODYSSEIA IN ANCIENT GREEK
ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε, μοῦσα, πολύτροπον, ὃς μάλα πολλὰ
πλάγχθη, ἐπεὶ Τροίης ἱερὸν πτολίεθρον ἔπερσεν·
πολλῶν δ᾽ ἀνθρώπων ἴδεν ἄστεα καὶ νόον ἔγνω,
πολλὰ δ᾽ ὅ γ᾽ ἐν πόντῳ πάθεν ἄλγεα ὃν κατὰ θυμόν,
ἀρνύμενος ἥν τε ψυχὴν καὶ νόστον ἑταίρων.
ἀλλ᾽ οὐδ᾽ ὣς ἑτάρους ἐρρύσατο, ἱέμενός περ·
αὐτῶν γὰρ σφετέρῃσιν ἀτασθαλίῃσιν ὄλοντο,
νήπιοι, οἳ κατὰ βοῦς Ὑπερίονος Ἠελίοιο
ἤσθιον· αὐτὰρ ὁ τοῖσιν ἀφείλετο νόστιμον ἦμαρ.
τῶν ἁμόθεν γε, θεά, θύγατερ Διός, εἰπὲ καὶ ἡμῖν.
AND THE MODERN GREEK TRANSLATION
Τον άντρα τον πολύπραγο τραγούδησέ μου, ω Μούσα,
που περισσά πλανήθηκε, σαν κούρσεψε της Τροίας
το ιερό κάστρο, και πολλών ανθρώπων είδε χώρες
κι έμαθε γνώμες, και πολλά στα πέλαα βρήκε πάθια,
για μια ζωή παλεύοντας και γυρισμό συντρόφων.
Μα πάλε δεν τους γλύτωσε, κι αν το ποθούσε, εκείνους,
τι από δική τους χάθηκαν οι κούφιοι αμυαλωσύνη,
του Ήλιου του Υπερίονα σαν εφαγαν τα βόδια,
κι αυτός τους πήρε τη γλυκιά του γυρισμού τους μέρα.
Απ΄ όπου αν τα ΄χεις, πες μας τα, ω θεά, του Δία κόρη.
Where is the Albanian in the Ancient text?
Where is the total difference between the Ancient and the Modern Greek text that you believe in?
Stop confusing the others with lies.
Il CAPO said
That’s not representative. Catalan is much more similar to French than Spanish.
Don Baragiano said
SRD = Sardinia ?
Irhad Babic said
And what about Bosnian in Slavic group?
George said
Greek : there is something mystical and powerful seeing my language stand alone on the center ! One of the most ancient languages still spoken !
Salvo said
http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/php/code_list.php
Pierre-Olivier said
SRD stands for Sardagna / Bok could be the Bornholmsk: a mix of Danish-Swedish language talked in a small island, Bornholm.
Allan Lachlan said
Where’s Turkish, Azeri, Maltese, Armenian and Georgian?
erhan said
no turkish?
reosarevok said
BOK would be Norwegian Bokmal I assume, and SRD is probably Sardinian
Martin said
Basque is a language isolate-not related or not demonstrated to be related to another language so it wouldn’t figure in this representation
Ilkka Salo said
Where are the other Finno-Ugric languages (Moksha, Mari, Komi and so on…)? They are printed, have newspapers, widely spoken and have even universities.
Altin said
Thank you Tim, lonely but proudly to be Albanian.
Sampo Syreeni said
Me and a couple of friends of mine have been digging around this chart for a bit after one of us wondered what “Ir” in the language codes might mean. Right now, even though one of us reads Ukrainian — which seems to be the language the work is written in, instead of Russian — we haven’t been able to find the source data for the graph. A version of it does seem to appear in the background of the cover of the print edition of the book, but nothing else has surfaced. More than a few people who know something about their linguistics have also noted highly suspicious omissions in lexical overlap, and a weird absence of certain languages over all, like Russian, minority Finnish-Ugric languages and Turkish.
Thus, could somebody help us trace down where the chart *precisely* came from, what its underlying data sources are, and how precisely it came to be associated with a work in linguistic *meta*theory which doesn’t appear to deal in this kind of lexical minutiae at all?
kristianmitk said
Sr is Sorbian – two Slavic minority languages spoken in Eastern Germany
Carlos Bravo Villalba said
Where’s Basque?
Ladislau Bogdan said
@Laura Blumenthal:
SRD – sardinian
BOK – bokmal
Sara Snyder said
@Laura Blumenthal, BOK is Norwegian (apparently there are two different written forms of Norwegian, one of which is called Bokmål, who knew?) and I’m assuming SRD is Sardinian. Because yes, I am a nerd.
Unified Pop Theory » Lexical Differences Among European Languages Visualized is a Graph said
[…] Writer and self proclaimed “etymologikonoclast” Teresa Elms of Eytmologikon answers this question in a blog post. […]
armand said
Albania the root
cartographer1973 said
For Piotrek and Laura Blumenthal:
BOK – Bokmål (a variant of Norwegian)
SRD – Sardinian
SR – Sorbian
cartographer1973 said
ALBANIAN LANGUAGES
Alb – Albanian
BALTIC LANGUAGES
Lat – Latvian
Lit – Lithuanian
CELTIC LANGUAGES
Bre – Breton
Ga – Gaelic
Ir – Irish
We – Welsh
FINNO-UGRIC LANGUAGES
Est – Estonian
Fin – Finnish
Hun – Hungarian
GERMANIC LANGUAGES
Bok – Bokmål
Dsh – Danish
Dut – Dutch
Eng – English
Fa – Faeroese
Fri – Frisian
Ger – German
Ice – Iceland
NN – Nynorsk Norwegian
Swe – Sweden
GREEK LANGUAGES
Grk – Greek
ROMANCE LANGUAGES
Cat – Catalan
Fre – French
Glc – Galician
Ita – Italian
Por – Portuguese
Pro – Provençal
Rm – Romansh
Rom – Romanian
Spa – Spanish
Srd – Sardinian
SLAVIC LANGUAGES
Bul – Bulgarian
Bur – Belorussian
Cro – Croatian
Cze – Czech
Ma – Macedonian
Pol – Polish
Rus – Russian
Slo – Slovenian
Sr – Sorbian
Srb – Serbian
Svk – Slovakian
Ukr – Ukranian
There’s a lot of comments asking about Basque. Since it isn’t related to any known language, I’m sure that’s why it hasn’t been included. I would make a guess, however, that there may be a measurable lexical distance between Basque and its geographic neighbors (such as Spanish and Galician).
Laura Blumenthal said
Thank you cartographer1973 and everyone else who wrote the answers to my question.
Star said
I love how Hun is way off in the corner, further away from the finno Uralic than Celtic is to English or romance, but somehow people keep lumping them together.
Somewhere else, part 108 | Freakonometrics said
[…] Distance Among the Languages of Europe” https://elms.wordpress.com/2008/03/04/ … via […]
Patrick said
“but it did not ADD French grammar”
It did in my brain. Living in France for a few years will do that to you.
Conor O'Kane said
Laura Blumenthal – SRD is Sardo, the Sardinian tongue, which my brother in law speaks – he describes it as a cross between italian and Catalan, and when we were in Barcelona he had no problem being understood or understanding, despite never having been to Spain or spoken Spanish / Catalan before. BOK is Bokmal, not a type of Danish as you might think from the map, but the official written form of Norwegian ( NN is Nynorsk) the purest or purist form of Norwegian. As in any post-colonial situation there are as many arguments around as you care to find! A really interesting depiction i must say. Noted the lack of Basque, but again it is unconnected to any other language so maybe it would have felt a bit lonely sitting there with no lines connecting it to anyone else. And I notice the entire Scots language family is missing from the Germanic family too, which would doubtless infuriate our own Ulster-Scots Agency were any of them actually interested enough in language or linguistics to check this diagram out…
Piotrek said
How have you prepared this this chart? Is there a tool for it?
Kövecs Ferenc said
BOK should be bokmal (a Norwegian dialect), SRD is Sard, the native language of Sardegna.
tolkarover said
Anyone know how to get the raw data for this chart? I would love to run different clustering and dimensionality reduction algorithms on it.
Wayne Johnson said
Laura B, I’m guessing bokmal (Norwegian) and Sardinian.
Lee Friedman said
Basque, Maltese, and Turkish certainly qualify as European languages as much as some of the others on the graph. However they are outliers with regard to lexical distance which seems to be the primary characteristic to be depicted. They could be included as circles on the outer edges.The graph is also not restricted to Indo-European languages nor those written in the Roman alphabet.
There is another omission that hasn’t yet been mentioned: Yiddish is a European fusion language closest to the Germanic group but with significant Slavic and Romance components as well as Semitic components and it is usually written in a Semitic alphabet. There is even empty space available in the graph between Germanic and Slavic (closer to Germanic) with room for links to Italian and French.
Didier Suomi said
Bokmål , a standardised norvegian, and Sardu, as spoken in Sardinia
hecate said
SRD probably stands for Sardinian. NN is Nynorsk Norwegian and BOK is Bokmål Norwegian.
Kormány Pál said
I think it’s also important to note what the contribution of a given language can be to Overall European Babel… If one would like to to find as many words for sports, England will be the best supplier. Like for winds, sailing, rail travel, politics, pop music… The word power of English words must be recognised walking along the streets of London, the largest village of the globe, reading the names of some streets. Oxford Street, Haymarket, Threadneedle Street (in the very City)… These names and plenty
would sound funny if translated into other languages… And let’s stop here. In some languages the team of best players playing versus the team of a specific country is called the World’s Selection… The English simply call it The Rest of the World… Dignity.
Kormány Pál said
These names and plenty more…
Anna Ryndova said
Yes, too bad that there is no legend. I think Sr must be Sorbian, Srd Sardinian. What is Bok and Dut though? And where is Sami?
Elenor said
BOK and NN are Boksmal and Nynorsk, the two varieties of Norwegian language. The former is basically Danish with some Norwegian localisms. The latter is the standardized version of the old dialects which maintained a more thorough West Norse character.
SRD is presumably Sardinian, well regarded for its conservative features preserving aspects of Roman Empire era vulgar Latin.
Rossella Rosin said
I can’t find turkish…?
andreas said
basque does not have ties to any of those languages and probably that is why it is not charted
rudoelcojonudo said
What about Euskera (Basque), one of the oldest languages in Europe and one of the few that does´t come from indo-european languages?
Tonje Folkestad said
BOK is Norwegian bokmål, (lit. “Book language”), i.e. The variety write by the majority of Norwegians. NN then refers to Norwegian nynorsk (“new norwegian”), a written form developed In the 1800s based on rural dialects.
Tonje Folkestad said
*written* by the majority of Norwegians… 🙂
Hanna said
Please add a legend, there are plenty of abbreviations I cannot interpret without one..
Jessica said
BOK – bokmal Norwegian
NN – Nynorsk (new norwegian)
Steve said
I could just add one thing to this.
There is no such thing as Finno-Ugric languages. There has never existed such a people as Ugric, no remains, no archeological or genetical evidence has ever been came to light that would support this. It is merely a theory that was invented by the Hapsburgs in the 18.-19. century for political purposes (to discredit Hungarian history).
The truth is, as recent genetical experiments reveal, that the Hungarian
is the original population of Europe that survived in the very heart of the continent. Hungarian is so different from any other languages due to its age: it’s a neo-paleolithic language, a living fossile, that pre-dates all Indo-European languages around it. Ancient Sumerian (Mesopotamia) texts, and Etruscan scriptures can be still in traces understood even in modern
Hungarian. Moreover the first human writing ever, the so-called “Tartaria Tablets” from 5200BC are written in Hungarian Runic script. They were found in the valley River Maros by female archeologist Torma in Transylvania (then Hungary, now under Romanian occupation). Scriptures written by Hungarian runic script are allegedly also found in the Bosnian piramyds in Visoko, Bosnia.
bulibashescu said
“Under Romanian occupation” :))))) Yeah, right, Pista, since 75% of the population is Romanian, and the historical percentage of the Romanian population ranged from 62% to 53.8% (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transylvania#Population). Get your facts straight, Pista, before you start posting your nationalistic crap here
Gabriela said
And think of the millions Romanians killed by Austro-Hungarian Empire and those before them. So, the Hungarians lived here thousands of years BC and, after going we don’t know where, they came back in about 11th century. BUT hey, no Hungarian was still living there… HMM … Logic… Yeah…
John Smith said
BOK == Bokmål, one of the two written variants of Norwegian.
SRD == Sardinian, the language of Sardinia.
Or so I think, based on the correlation to other stuff.
Leif Pareli said
The Sami languages (some ten or so) should have been up there near Finnish somewhere. Three of them are official languages in Norway.
Ferko Mrkvicka said
(My guesses)
SRD – Sardinian
BOK – Bokmal (a variant of Norwegian)
NN – Nynorsk (another variant of Norwegian)
Sr – Sorbian (languages of the Sorbs)
Basque is not present because it is not even remotely related to any other known language 🙂
Franz said
Yeah… what about basque?
Marc Costa said
Catalan has 7 million speakers and it is quite bound to French and Portuguese, specially Portuguese… So catalan is quite wrong there
Fran said
the graphic should be tridimensional, horizontal distance should show common origen of a word, for example agua in Spanish and eau in French both came from acqua in latin, and vertically how far the words are from original (close for Spanish far from French). In that case, in the horizontal axis, French will be closer to Spanish (both Gallo-Iberian languages) than Italian, but Italian will be closer in total. Other example: camino in Spanish, chemin in French, from Celt, camminus and via in Italian latin via
Jarmo L said
Sr probably means Sorbian, Srd means Sardinian, I believe. BOK means Bokmål, one of the two official languages of Norway, and NN means Nynorsk, the other one. And yes, where is Basque? It would be interesting to see what methods have been used. JL
Fran said
Probably a lot of English word are Latin origen (“to continue” for example) but the most used and normal used one are German ones (“to go on” for example). If you count the number of different entries in a dictionary , English looks Latin but when you count all the words, including repetitions (like the word “the” or “of”) of most of the texts in English (other that scientific), it is definitively a German language
Luljeta Koshi said
Would you mind adding Bosnian language to the Slavic group of languages next to Croatian and Serbian? Thank you very much.
BN said
The statement “All the groups except for Finno-Ugric (in yellow) are in turn members of the Indo-European language family” is a bit of a myth, isn’t it? I attended a national history seminar in Finland last year, where this “fact” was contested, at least. Certainly finnish is uncomprehenasable to other scandinavian language speakers (unlike swedish, danish and norwegian, which can communicate quite easily in-between with only little training), but when you analyze it word by word, you find lots of bits that are common. Finnish is also a so-called kasus-language, unlike any other scandinavian language, but it has this in common with russian, german and italian, to name a few other, indeed Indo-European languages. Finnish grammar isn’t alien, like for instance eastern asian laguages. Geographically it doesn’t make sense that one language group, Finno-Urgic, should remain as a vertical island in almost mid-Europe, unaffacted by the huge movement of people from east to west the last few thousand years. For basque, it makes a little more sense that it could remain a language-island, as it lies in an outskirt. As with other “young” countries, like Norway, there was a process in Finland starting in the second half of the 1800s where the nation’s own language was constituted, and where the difference from others was indeed important to stress. This can explain the very different spellings of some words, which has the same origin as the same term used in for instance sweden, the arch enamy. This constructed difference / national myth isn’t as important now.
Altay said
This chart is totally meaningless! The author had to consider the issue from the perspective of origin and reality rather than political considerations! Example: just in Russia there are so many representatives of different languages, take various Ugor languages. Altai family: Azerbaijani, tatar, bashkird, Volga bulgarians, karachays, balkars, kumiks, nogays. If he thinks that the large space of Russia is only about the Russian language, then his paper work looses its value..
What about Chechen, Ingush, Adigey, Avar and other languages!
What about the South Caucasian languages?
Neil said
SRD is probably Sardinian. And BOK would be bokmal, one of the varieties of Norwegian.
Luisa said
“BOK” must be Bokmal, one of the two versions of Norwegian. And “SRD” – Sardinian?
(Just hypotheses)
Søren Bentzen said
BOK is Bokmål which is one of the two official languages in Norway. The other one is Ny Norsk (NN). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokm%C3%A5l
Jan said
Laura Blumenthal, I assume BOK is Norwegian Bokmål and SRD is Sardinian.
Tina said
SRD – Sardinian
BOK – Bokmål (one of the official Norwegian languages) (NN – nynorsk/new Norwegian)
Brian Kane said
I’m guessing we’re “Germanic” due to the vast hordes of furrinners who were “Viking” around the area way back when.
Natalie said
I’m surprised. Ukrainian and Hungarian somehow connected? They don’t have a single common word! And yes, where is basque? Even not connected to any language it must be on the map
Anders Svensson said
BOK is standard norwegian which is based on danish. NN is “nynorsk”, new norwegian, based on old west-coast norwegian dialects. Plattdeutsch (low german) is missing. Modern german is not like low german that often can be understood by a swede if spoken. It provides a link between the scandinavian languages and frisian, dutch as well as german. The three existing lapponian (sami) languages are missing as well. SRD most be sardinian.
Sarah said
Would be helpful to have a broader definition of “lexical distance”? What’s the math behind this calculation?
A legend wld help me as well…
Thx a lot, if available…
Jo Gessner said
BOK is for Bokmål, which is an official written standard for the Norwegian language and spoken by ca 90% of the population. SRD is for Sardu (Sardinian language). SR maybe for Sorbian?
Frode said
Laura: My guess is that BOK is Bokmål Norwegian and NN is Nynorsk Norwegian. Also guessing that SRD is Sardinian.
Hristo Nikolov said
Bulgarian and Macedonian must be in the same circle. English and Scottish English are more different, than Bulgarian and Macedonian 😉
Aggelos said
What they baptised as Macedonian is Slavic. The true Macedonians were speaking, speak and will keap speaking Greek.
Web Owl said
Strange that Polish would have greater lexical distance to German than to Lithuanian – doesn’t seem right
Anne said
SRD is sardinian and I guess BOK is a kind of norwegian. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_639_macrolanguage
Fintan Convery said
Why is Basque not shown? Is it because it is an ‘Out-On-Its-Own’ language unrelated to anything in Europe and even in the rest of the world? I do like this chart though.
Goran Stamenković said
It’s a nonsense that Albanian is closer to Slovenian than to Romanian. It is much closer to Romance languages and has no connection at all with Slovenian(?!), because Slovenians had never got in touch with Albanians throughout history. On the other side, “modern” Albanian borrowed many words from Serbo-Croatian, so I think this is where Albanian should be connected to the Slavic language group.
James said
Goran, for the sake of the truth, neither “modern” Albanian or old one didn’t borrow any words from Slavic language group (Albanians didn’t come from Carpathian mountains like Serbs), so please do some research and read more before you make any comment.
Cunnilinguist said
I’m from Slovenia and I couldn’t agree with you more!
Antonio said
Scholars thoughts are that Albanian must be closer to Romanian due to the Thraco-Dacian-Illyrian connection but never ever to slavic language group. Are you kidding?! Just because of some words borrowed due to the slavic invasion?!
I really don’t know on what basis the connections here are assumed but if there is any scientific meaning I would say that maybe the Illyrian substrate makes Slovenian and Albanian closer. But I really don’t think there is any real research on this map.
Immanuel Giulea said
I have trouble with the node “ROM” not being connected with the Slavic group.
Romania has been under Soviet/Russian influence for several centuries.
mutiarafadjar said
SRD stands for Sarda, language of Sardegna, I believe
Wim Peters said
Interesting!
Since the original source was published in Russian, a short description of the methodology, in particular the computation of the lexical distance score would be helpful.
petrudamsa said
SRD – Sard (or Sardinian), some peopel regards it as a dialect of Italian, although seems is not.
Balazs Kiss said
Does the length of the different lines (“lexical distance”) also count? I do not quite understand why some lines (of the same dotting style) are shorter or longer…
Martha said
BOK would be Bokmål (spoken in Norway) I guess, and SRD Sardinian?
damndyd said
There’s about 2 million of Slovenian speakers, not over 3.1 million! And more importantly – in what way is Slovenian connected to Albanian?! I don’t think so!
Dritan said
Maybe Slovenian were the last Illyrian tribe that were sllavicized.
Cunnilinguist said
They always make a mess with Slovenia and Slovakia … too similar name, too similar flag, nothing new 😉
Sven Pin said
Sr = Sorbian
BOK = Bokmål (a form of Norwegian)
SRD = Sardinian
adriano said
SRD might be Sardinian (which is a language not a an Italian dialect)
Farid Belkhatir said
Jonathon, Basque is not an Indo-european language, therefore it is not related to any of the cited languages. Laura Blumenthal, BOK should be Bokmal, the educated dialect of Norwegian, and SRD should be Sardinian.
Tessa said
I think SRD would be Sardinian about BOK no idea. Does anyone know “Pro”?
Ignazio said
PRO stands for Provençal
Dearan said
SRD – Sardinian I would think
Piotr said
@Piotrek Lesser and Upper Sorbian from Lusatia. But how Hungarian is related to Lithuanian or Latvian? Ukrainian maybe, thanks to Carpathian Ruthenia but it’s weak. They may have rather some connections with Turkish or German thanks to historical domination of the Sublime Porte and Habsburg Empire.
Barna said
very good question! 😮
Mats Sjöblom said
BOK would be Norwegian Bokmål (an Eastern Scandinavian language actually based on Danish rather than spoken Norwegian, as opposed to Nynorsk, a Western Scandinavian language reconstructed from spoken Norwegian dialects in the 19th century), SRD would be Sardinian.
curious bro said
What is pro? 😦
Jeff said
BOK = Norwegian Bokmal… NN = New Norwegian… What’s FRI?
Viktorie said
I really dig your concept, well done!!!! But please tell me, why there is no Bosnian? Dont get me wrong, Im nor angry nor Bosnian, but I just wonder because Ive been studying South-Slavic languages and I know for sure that Croatian, Serbian and Bosnian may be all very similar languages in general principle, but since this should be the lexical distance and there are a lot of words of Turkish descent Bosnians use and the other two groups dont use, Id assume Bosnian would have its place. Thank you for the answer!
Emanuele said
There should definitely be a direct link between Italian and Greek, even displaying little or medium distance…!
eva said
Srd is probably Sardinian, older language than Italian.
MathieuB said
Interesting!
Yep, a legend would be handy.
Also, knowing the official “major languages of Europe” chart, knowing where the considered languages start.
best regards
The Old Wolf said
Yes, where *is* Euskara? I was surprised that surprised Albanian, long touted as another isolate, is closer to Romance than Greek is to, say, Lithuanian. But it appears that Basque is literally “off the chart.”
Fernando said
I categorically disagree with the apparent lack of common vocabulary between PRO and CAT. They are so close we used to study their joint medieval literature together back at high-school.
It is only through the Occitan linguistic continuum that CAT and FRE find themselves linked.
Aggelos said
You use words as “etymologikon”, “monosyllables”, etc. but you do not refer to the Hellenic (Greek is absolutely wrong term) language that is the base of all the others. Very “good” ANALYSIS (another Hellenic word in the English language)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Jens said
@ Laura: I’m pretty sure BOK stands for the Norwegian variety Bokmål (as opposed to Nynorsk which was apparently abbreviated as NN). SRD is probably Sardinian.
But a legend would certainly help, I agree! I’m wondering what PRO is supposed to be.
Lexical Distance | exitcreative said
[…] this via Tumblr yesterday. It’s basically a map that depicts the vocabulary commonality across Indo-European […]
Elisa Peresbarbosa said
Do you know which softwere was used to built the graphical representation?
Bjorn Carlen said
What about the Sami languages? Seem to be all forgotten, just like the Basque.
David Person said
SRD = Sardinian, guessing that SR = Sorbian, and BOK I have no idea…
David Graber said
Why would Slovenian be lexically closer to Albanian than any other Slavic language? This is very curious.
Dritan said
Maybe they were the last tribe that was Sllavicized.
Antti Tarvainen said
I would guess that SRD = Sardinian and BOK = Bokmål (Norwegian).
N Kibre said
Can we see the underlying data?
Salvatore said
SRD = Sardinian language
vasdecabeza2 said
Where are the asian languages? xD
vasdecabeza2 said
Where are the asian and arabiclanguages? xD
Dwight Holmes said
I’m assuming SRD is Sardo, the language of Sardinia??
cameron said
@Laura Blumenthal
I am assuming BOK= Bokmål –> NN= Nynorsk
and SRD = Sardinian
Tamas Mohai said
BOK is Bokmal (Norwegian) perhaps, while SRD is Sardinian I guess
Walter Foddis said
I believe SRD is Sardinian. (Wikipedia: Sardinian (Logudorese: sardu/saldu, limba sarda, Campidanese: sardu/sadru, lingua sarda) is a Romance language spoken on most of the island of Sardinia (Italy). It is the most conservative of the Romance languages in terms of phonology and is noted for a Paleosardinian substratum.)
orjanvilen said
BOK must be Norwegian Bokmål and SRD must be Sardinian. But what is PRO and Rm?
andrea said
Sardinian is a (useful) language?
Mario said
Why there is
1, no link between CZE and POL?
2. no continuos line between RUS and BLR? (the Whiterussian language just vary by <10% from the Russian)
3. some more strange things in the slavic corner 😮
Arturo Malvestito said
Mario, are you sure about these 10%? Try speaking Belarusian to a Russian – no way they understand it. And do you really want to call Belarusians Whiterussians? It is offensive and historically not justifiable (no matter how Russians want you to believe in it)
Tony Chapman said
I noticed someone said “where is Basque on the chart”. Well, Basque is a “remnant” language and doesn’t really seem to fit anywhere
Richard Wassell said
Sr = Sorbian (not the same as Serbian). I think. Srd = Sard(inian). Bok = (Norwegian) Bokmål. Apologies if not correct!
Albert said
SRD refers to sardinian language. BOK, I don’t know.
Paul said
BOK – Norwegian Bokmal
SRD – Sardinian, I guess?
Jiles said
Where is Latin? Arguably–German, English, French, Italian all get quite a bit of vocabulary from Latin!
Ignazio said
In its freaking grave, I suppose.
Dominika said
Fri is Frisian. Srd (next to Italian) is Sardinian. Sr (between Polish and Czech) is Sorbian, which is spoken by a small Slavic group in East Germany. Bok (in Scandinavia) might be Bokmal, which is a dialect of Norwegian/Swedish? Not sure about that one.
Martin Ž. said
bokmaal is official norwegian language and it is practically the same as danish cos it was derived around the beggining of 20st as far as I remember. Nynorsk is “new norwegian” that was developed by nacionalists who didnt like the feeling that their official language is based on a country that used to rule over their motherland. I guess it is official but sparsely spoken.
HESSSIGN (@hess_sign) said
If I had to guess, BOK and NN are dialects of Norwegian, Bokmal and NyNorsk
tanja caric said
SRD is Sardo, language on Sardinia, Italian island. BOK is Bokmal, Danish language.
HESSSIGN (@hess_sign) said
That’s Bokmål and Nynorsk … SRD must be Sardinian, Wikipedia estimates at ~1mil speakers in 2007.
slobodan said
Slavic Bosnia and Herzegovina
Ali said
Albania unical
Sorin Pop said
Not only Albanian, Greek as well. But you dononly wanna see Albanian as unique, since I assume you are albanian… By the way, I am neither Albanian nor Greek.
Lingvistiskt glädjefnatt | Klassrum 33 said
[…] lämnar er med en sjukt upphetsande överraskningspresent: Det lexikala avståndet mellan språken i Europa. Om jag visste hur man säger totally mind-blowing på svenska skulle jag säga det. Så, klicka […]
David Collins said
Romance family: SRD would be Sardinian, wouldn’t it? ROM = Romanian, as you might expect, and Rm = Romansch. PRO = Provençal.
Germanic family: BOK = Bokmål (“book tongue”), the standard classical Norwegian, whereas NN = Nynorsk.
Georgios m said
It is kind of mystical and very powerful that Greek my Language is in center of this.. Alone .. connecting to every group .. makes me feel proud to speak one of the most Ancient languages in the world .
Ignazio said
This comment reminds me a lot “My Big Fat Greek Wedding”.
Georgios m said
Ignacio don’t forget miller comes from milo witch is Greek for Apple … And it is known ( GOT REF.. )that when GREEKS had cholesterol others where inventing fire still lol lol jk !
Distancia léxica entre los idiomas europeos said
[…] Vía Etymologikon. […]
BASTA! said
SRD is Sardinian and BOK is Norwegian Bokmål.
Andreas Gorsler said
Would be very interesting to see Latin in there. Certainly it is the mother for the Romance famiy but it gave its grammar to German, too. And a lot of its vocabulary to it.
Sorin Pop said
Would not be logical. This is obviously a chart with the languages CURRENTLY spoken throughout Europe, dude.
Francu Emil said
The differences between Romanian and French come from the fact that Romania is isolated surrounded by Slavic countries (such as Ukraine , Serbia , Bulgaria , a Finno Ugric country (Hungaria) and a serious Turkish and Greek influence along the history . Romanian is very similar with some of the dialects spoken in Italy for example .
Sorin Pop said
True, very true. But why this tendency to always compare Romanian with French, and not, another western Romance language. Always french, always french…
Stein said
bok is probably Bokmål which is a written standard for Norwegian
Guilherme said
Bok refers to Bokmål and Srd probably to Sardinian
Minna said
NN= Nynorsk BOK=Bokmål both Norwegian
Danilo Freire said
Laura: I’m not 100% sure, but I assume BOK and SRD are Bokmål (the official written language of Norway, along NN – Nynorsk, or “new Norwegian”) and Sardinian (spoken in Sardinia, Italy).
"Distancia" léxica entre las diferentes lenguas europeas [ENG] said
[…] "Distancia" léxica entre las diferentes lenguas europeas [ENG] […]
Guido said
I call bullshit! There are, for instance, very distinct similarities between Celtic languanges and both Greek and Slavic, but little with French or English. Don’t believe everything you read. Someone just took a map and started filling it in with data, without thinking…. this means absolutely very little.
leif said
BOK is norwegian
WeWillSeeIt said
Yes, Hungary (wegry’) isn’t baltic/ finno-ugric, that is an Russian “thinking” about. I hope, in the near future (10-20 years).. will found the connect with celtic language (I read lot of about.. more similar basic words than finno-ugric/ baltic area..). But that will re-write the history of Europe.. therefore not so easy.. I hope, will be a few very talented people.. who can do it.. that study.
Sorin Pop said
What a bullshit…
WeWillSeeIt said
And thanks! 🙂
S.M.W. said
@ Laura Blumenthal: BOK is Bokmål, a dialect of Norwegian (the other being Nynorsk [NN in the diagram]). Can’t help you with SRD though.
Alan said
I guess “srd” stands for Sardinian language, spoken on most of the island of Sardinia (Italy).
But I can’t figure out what “Rm” and “Pro” stand for.
Maik said
Basque is missing, just write it somewhere without any kind of relation other European languages.
Artur said
“Sr”, I believe, refers to Sorbian languages spoken in Upper and Lower Lusatia. The region lies on the southern German-Polish border. In fact when you hear it, is sounds like a mixture of Polish and Czech.
Best said
Is the base of many words Greek?
asli said
A legend would be great. I’m curious about Fa.
Esther said
I’m thinking Faroese, spoken on Faroe islands.
spike said
SVK is actually twice as big as SLO, so which one is which in this lexical map ???
Martin Ž. said
SVK is Slovakian because it has Czech as brother language
Cunnilinguist said
They always make a mess with Slovenia and Slovakia … too similar name, too similar flag, nothing new 😉
Wayne Spillett (@WMSpillett) said
“Those famous Anglo-Saxon monosyllables live on!” – actually, the SH** word is very old English, but many modern swear words including the F*** and C*** words are NOT Anglo-Saxon, they entered England on the lips of Dutch sailors as late as Elizabethan times. Those poor Anglo-Saxons get blamed for far too much…
Kreith Bradford said
You jump to strange conclusions, Wayne. I think the “famous Anglo-Saxon monosyllables” are words like: and, when, then, so, this, and that (but not the other).
Veb Ko said
Albanian is language in its own and one of the older languages in Europe along with Greek
pako jones said
Basque?
Kati said
BOK = Bokmål, the other Norwegian written type, NN = Nynorsk, the other one.
SAR = Sardinian?
But where are all the 6/7 Sámi languages?
tuarek007 said
Where’s Basque?!?!?!?!?!????!?!?!?!? …
john said
educated guesses:
celtic
we=welsh,bre=breton,ga=scots gaelic,ir=irish gaelic
germanic
ice=icelandic, swe=swedish, fa=faroese,nn=norwegian-nunorsk,bok=norwegian-bokmal,dsh=danish,eng=english,fri=frisian,dut=dutch,ger=german;
finno-ugric
fin=finnish, est=estonian, hun=hungarian;
baltic
lat=latvian, lit=lithuanian;
romance
fre=french, rm=romansh (swiss), pro=provencal, ita=italian, srd=sardinian, por=portugese, glc=galician, spa=spanish castillian, cat=catalan, rom=romanian;
grk=greek
alb=albanian
slavic
pol=polish, sr=sorbian or serbian, cze=czech, ukr=ukranian, svk=slovak, ma=macedonian, blr=bulgarian, slo=slovene, cro=croat, srb=serbian or sorbian, rus=russian;
Schpouik said
Except that Dutch got a lot of common words with French
Spain is the best said
That’s right, everyone. The most utilitarian Romance language to learn is Spanish.
Take *that*, Italian!
Sorin Pop said
Well, Italian sounds much more beuatiful to me. Spanish sounds like barking to me. I’m not Italian by the way.
Katja P. said
Laura Blumenthal: BOK = bokmål, traditional Norwegian. Could SRD be Sardinian?
Midas Duiker said
It is Roman language, not Romance!
ME said
& you know oh so much about latin and the languages steming from it
Lee said
Laura, they are respectively Bokmål (a Norwegian language) and Sardinian (spoken in Sardinia, Italy).
David Joseph said
SRD Possible explanations but not there
SRD Suriname Dollar (ISO currency code)
SRD System Reference Document
SRD Swine Respiratory Disease
SRD Service de Règlement Différé (French: Deferred Settlement Service)
SRD Systems Research & Development
SRD Science Requirements Document
SRD Sonar Research & Development
SRD Secret Restricted Data
SRD Safety and Reliability Directorate (UK)
SRD Stress Response Dampening (alcohol study)
SRD Southern Record Distributors
SRD Software Requirements Description
SRD Standards Requirements Document
SRD Société de Recherche Dermatologique (French: Society of Dermatological Research)
SRD Serial Receive Data
SRD Selected Record Drawings
SRD Standard Reporting Designator
SRD Société des Régates de Douarnenez (French: Regatta Society of Douarnenez; Douarnenez, France)
SRD Society for Rural Development (India)
SRD Specification Requirements Document
SRD System Readiness Test
SRD System Requirements Description
SRD Selected Record Data
SRD Service-Revealed Difficulty
SRD Short Range Dependence Model
SRD Sales Racing Development (New Zealand)
SRD Service Release Date
SRD Signed-Rank Detector
SRD Securities Registration Depository, Inc. (computing company; Dublin, OH)
SRD System(s) Requirement(s) Document
SRD Scrambler Resynchronization Delay
SRD Systems Resources Division
SRD System Requirement Database
SRD Standard Renewal Discount (insurance)
SRD Service-Revealed Deficiency
SRD System Report Designator
SRD Science Review Directorate (UK)
SRD Software Requirements Document
SRD Summary Receipts and Disbursements
SRD Sustainable Resource Development (Alberta, Canada)
SRD Scientific Research Development
SRD State Registered Dietitian
SRD Student Research in Diversity (Columbia University; New York, NY)
SRD Short Range Devices (wireless networking)
SRD Step Recovery Diode
SRD Spin Rinse Dryer
SRD Significantly Revised Down
SRD Salary Review Date
SRD Search and Rescue Dog
SRD Standard Reference Data
SRD Sem Raca Definida (Brazilian goat: without defined breed)
SRD Specific Reading Disability (Dyslexia)
SRD Stress Related Disorder
SRD Sender Reputation Data
Pretty similar for BOK
http://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/
Monica Buckland said
@Laura: Bokmål (Norwegian, along with Nynorsk) and Sardinian, is my guess.
Gergely Ioan said
Where is turkish??
Andri said
BOK and NN are Bokmål and Nynorsk, both official languages in Norway. Some say that Nynorsk is really just a dialect of the older classic Norwegian Bokmål.
joe said
BOK = Bokmål (Norwegian)
SRD = Sardinian
Laura said
And Sr? I thought maybe Silesian but yhen why the R?
Stacie said
Does the NN near Bokmål mean Nynorsk?
Michi said
SRD is “Sardo”, Sardinian language. no clue of what BOK could mean.
Stefan Storm said
Bokmål (litt. “book speech”) and Nynorsk (litt. “New Norwegian”) are the two Norwegian written languages.
Bert Wilson said
French grammar is alive in English , in a small way – the phrase “Attorney General” is a French word order.
Adrian Baxt-Dent said
As it is a standard phrase, it is more like a lexical item than a grammatical “rule”.
Byron D-B said
Hey Bert!
French grammar also survives in the persistence of the feeling that “It’s me!” is grammatical (natural, instinctive). (Along with “It’s them” “It’s her” “It’s him” “It’s us.”) They’re all analogous to the French use of the disjunctive pronoun in “C’est moi!” Thanks Normans! (aka Norsemen/Vikings w silly French accents….)
Bogdan Nicolae said
According to wiki: “The lexical similarity of Romanian with Italian has been estimated at 77%, followed by French at 75%, Sardinian 83%, Catalan 73%, Portuguese and Rhaeto-Romance 72%, Spanish 71%”. However, this chart places Romanian quite far from these numbers. Interestingly, Romanian and Albanian (lexical similarity estimated at about 500 words) are about as far as Romanian and French.
Sorin Pop said
While the chart may be slightly over-evaluating the closeness of Romanian to Albanian and under-evaluating its distance to the other Romance languages, I still seems to me that it depicts quite realistically the situation, as Romanian is indeed a little more different and unique compared to the cluster of the western Romance languages and it shows indeed surprisingly many similarities with Albanian (lexically speaking): even the 500 words you mention yourself, I think it is impressive (you seem to overlook that), and one should not be so surprised that Romanian is depicted fairly close to Albanian. On the other hand, I think you tend to slightly fall into the opposite extreme, trying very hard to over-evaluate the closeness of Romanian to the western Romance languages (and especially to French, for some reason) and under-evaluating its closeness to Albanian. But apart from that, what I find strange in this chart is that Romanian is depicted very far from the slavic languages, with whom, as I know, it also shares a vast lexical fund (probably even more than with Albanian, so according to this, it should be depicted closer to the slavic languages than to Albanian) – but I might be wrong here.
Going back to the many (and surprising) lexical similarities between Albanian and Romanian, there are several more or less plausible theories for their cause. To me, the most plausible one is the one that asserts that the roman legions who conquered and colonized Dacia predominantly consisted of soldiers recruited in the roman colonies of Illiria and Dalmatia, as they were much closer to the south-western borders of Dacia, so on their way to Dacia, the romans gathered a lot of fighting force from these regions, who were inhabited, we can assume, by proto-Albanians. As they became legionaries and roman colonists they of course had to learn and use Latin, but they also kept some of the words from their Illirian origins: so they probably spoke the vulgar latin of the simple roman non-Italic soldier, spiced with their own Illirian words, and this was probably the kind of language that imposed itself in the roman province of Dacia later. Hence the latin character of the Romanian, and hence its “strange” Albanian substratum. Seems plausible to me. Also note that Romanians look much more like the Albanians in their features, than compared to the French, a fact which is easily explained with the theory above as well.
I wrote these opinions as a simple person, native speaker of Romanian, not being an academic in linguistics, so I might be easily wrong. You never know with these things. Actually, we can never really know for sure anything…
Daniel said
Your theory about Albanian-Romanian connection is interesting and not entirely unfounded, especially when we think of the Aromanian populations in the Balkans. However, in lexical terms, there are a lot more Turkish, Greek and Hungarian words in Romanian than Albanian words…. I think.
eda said
the capital of Rumania, Bukurest is translated by albanian language meaning : is beauty-i bukur eshte. according to a story the founder of this city was Albanian. but there is out of logic to compare the old albanian language and find out similarities with slavic.
nick said
Even if the picture is an interesting approach, I agree that is deeply flawed.
Pano Soko said
I’m not sure you’re entirely correct (anyway I’m not sure). ROM-is I think is for Romance not for Romanian. I believe Romania is that ball up (RM), which is connected with French and Italian with the straight bold line. That makes sense. The only problem is the size of RM ball, which is too small (should have been ROM ball size).
If it’s correct what you say, and that ROM is for Romanian, then I think this study is totally wrong. Putting Romanian and Albanian in the same distance range as Romanian with French is completely wrong.
Nikola said
Romania-latino i think. But never mind, we are all – Homo Sapiens bro. 🙂
Patricia said
Very well pointed out! I thought I was the only one astonished by this. I might say that only someone who doesn’t have any idea about Latin languages could say that “English (a Germanic language) and French (a Romance language) are actually closer to each other in lexical terms than Romanian (a Romance language) and French”. The idea of making such a graph is a good one but this one is not accurate, unfortunately.
jacostrauss said
It is hard to comprehend the Dutch – Greek link in the diagram. I can speak the former but understand nothing of the latter. We also use the saying:”It is all Greek to me” when you understand nothing….
George m said
Well if you want to understand the link of Greek to all other languages in EU i can tell you even the word Etymologikon here.. is 100% Greek .. google it 😉
Mashinito said
You forgot to include Basque…. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basque_language
jack said
How about Basque?
Doug Laney said
I love infographics like this but dismissing this one as soon as I saw Icelandic is the 3rd closest language to English.
DaddyPro said
If there’s no Scottish, it’s CRAP.
Annamaria Weldon said
Maltese is the only Semitic official language within the European Union.
giuliettastirati said
Reblogged this on mangialibro.
harshT said
Reblogged this on Harsht's Journal of Random Ruminations and commented:
Came across this very interesting network visualization of Languages of Europe based on “Lexical Distance” (details in original post). Basically, languages more similar to one another tend to cluster together and these different clusters of similar languages tend to be quite disssimilar.
Occurred to me that a similar exercise was done on languages used in India, the results could be quite insightful. For one, it could tell us that the idea of using English as a bridge language is neither a natural nor an ideal solution to managing our linguistic plurality. Second , these clusters of proximate (i.e. more similar) languages could offer solutions for second/third language instructions in different states.
The possibilities are endless. I would appreciate your help in spreading the idea, so that some computationally inclined linguistic researcher can do this and related analyses for India’s Languages.
the european language-to-language network | orgtheory.net said
[…] From the Etomylogikon blog. […]
Language Family | znahi said
[…] Language Family […]
Mike said
Where is Basque?
Gilles Gravier said
Where is Romansh, one of the 4 spoken languages of Switzerland?
Marci Lindsay said
It’s there, abbreviated RM.
thomas gauthier said
Where is the basque language ?
Anadolka said
What about bosnian language. It seems it doesn’t exist, does it?
Paul Compton said
Fascinating from a linguistic perspective. Mathematically speaking, it’s fascinating too. Are there no languages in Europe with more than 3.0 million speakers and less than 3.1 million? None between 300,001 and 300,999? It’s possible, but it is a dodgy legend.
Sorin Pop said
Just subsequently going through all the comments, as somebody very interested in these things, I couldn’t help not noticing how tiringly and boringly the vast majority of the comments deal with the dull question of what BOK and SRD could mean, and also most of them just boringly assume or state that BOK is Boksmal and SRD Sardinian. Extremely boring. I think I had to read this something like 500 times, the same thing on and on: BOK is Boksmal, Norwegian bla blabla, SRD is Sardinian and so on. Thanks to all of you who had something more to say or ask than this dull question and answer.
Also, all those lonely frustrated cries for the smaller dialects, without understanding that the chart states: major languages! I feel for the ones who cry for the Basque though (although they are boring to read through as well), as indeed, as I understand, Basque might be the only living language of the first “aboriginal” Europeans, remnant from the times before Europe was invaded by Indo-Europeans and, to a lesser degree, by Finno-Ugors and Turkic people, so maybe Basque should be there somewhere indeed, even if it is not a major language any more. But I have read the word Boksmal so many times while going through this, that I think it is enough for a lifetime, probaly I don’t wanna see it again.
And of course I was not surprised that Greeks and Albanians could only use this opporunity to re-state that they are the belly of the world and their language is the most unique and ancient and so on. All my respect to the Hungarians, who could say at least the same thing about the uniqueness of their language, but didn’t show up with this. (allthough there was a way out comment by a Hungarian guy, stating something like they are the original and true Europeans and everything, almost going to the point of saying that even Egyptians spoke Hungarian – but just ignore him, that guy is probably completely nuts)
(I am Romanian, and partly Hungarian as well. Simply put, Transylvanian.) That reminds me! I should cry out for the rights of the Transylvanian variation of Romanian, or the Szekely (a Hungarian dialect, very ancient and spoken in a small Eastern part of Transylvania to this day) languages to be featured on this chart! :)))) LOL
George m said
Proto-Romanian (also known as “Common Romanian”, româna comună or “Ancient Romanian”, străromâna) is a Romance language evolved from Vulgar Latin and considered to have been spoken by the ancestors of today’s Romanians and related Balkan Latin peoples (Vlachs) before ca. 900 AD.
During the Middle Ages, Romanian became influenced by the Slavic languages[10] and to some degree by Greek. Romanian remains unattested throughout the Middle Ages, and only enters the historical record in the early 16th century.
Early history
(WIKIPEDIA)
Anyway us Greeks we or i.. didnt say we are the only important language .. just that i am proud of it beeing in the center it seemed nice.. and that its ancient witch also is kind of nice for some reasons .
blodeuedd said
Best comment ever. I was thinking the same thing 😉
Gabri said
Romanian it is quite easy to learn if you have studied Latin at school.
Mike said
“The original research data for the chart comes from K. Tyshchenko (1999), Metatheory of Linguistics. (Published in Russian.)”
One note: K.Tyshchenko is ukrainian scientist and “Metatheory of Linguistics” was published in Ukrainian – not Russian.
Christina Spjut said
Where is sami and basc languages?
Ajem said
Hungarian in fact has much more connection with the Sumerian than Finno-Ugoric languages. Some “clever” scientist found it out around the 18th century and since than this is the official statement. Just one interesting fact: currently there are 55 grammar rules known in the Sumerian language and 51 matches with the core Hungarian ones. With Sumerian a Caucasian one has the second more matches (I don’t remember its name precicesly) but even in that case there are only 29 matches.
Roanna Larsen said
…any idea where Basque would be on this map?
Juliana said
Legal
Rose said
Really interesting, thanks for sharing. However, I can’t help noticing that Basque is missing. It is certainly a European language, its speakers add up to 720.000 according to recent surveys, and it shares some of its lexicon with the languages that surround it, Spanish above all.
Javitxu said
What about Euskera? Where is it?
Edvin Pacara said
This chart is not correct. At least for Albanian and Estonian. The connection of Albanian with Slovenian is completely wrong. Lexically, the closest to Albanian is Romanian, and Slovenian would be the last language in the Balkans, with which Albanian is connected lexically. Also Estonian is not closer to Hungarian, than German. Lexically, 10% of words, and part of the grammar in Estonian have been influenced by old German. whereas with Hungarian, Estonian might have not more than 10 words which are a bit similar.
M said
I was just wondering who on Earth could find any similarity whatsoever between Slovenian and Albanian. (The broken line seemingly indicates there is some.)
Being Slovenian myself, I can from time to time understand one or two Albanian words, however the only reason is that I know some French.
Gorka said
Excellent linguistic map of Europe,
but where is the basque lenguage (euskera)?
One of the oldest leguage in Europe.
Mira said
Nice work, except there is no Bosnian. Why is it not enlisted with Slavic languages?
stuartelden said
Reblogged this on Progressive Geographies and commented:
An interesting linguistic map of Europe.
John Stuart Mill said
Perhaps the arrow from FRE to SPA should go from FRE to CAT
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occitano-Romance_languages
DanielR said
the data used for this graph is bullshit or very vague at most; useless talk
Kristin Page said
Explain, please. Why do you think so? The illustration is without data.
ME said
it is misleading in population. missing some languages. Basing stuff off wrong languages. not explaining enough. shall I continue?
Hernan Gonzalez Bordas said
I agree, is very vague, for exemple catalan and provençal should be as near as portuguese and gallician
Flying Frog said
We all suppose that you are an expert – Could you , please, support your intrinsically vague statement and adjective used ? Or, are you another frustrated teenager missing shooting game button ?
poochie said
What about the Basque?
Jordi said
I think that Catalan and French are much more close related than seen in this graph. And Occitan, should be between the two.
Basque language missing said
So, where is the Euskara? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basque_language
Cancer said
You forgot the Basque language….
Mariano said
Where is the basque, the only truly european language?
Mugerre said
Ok.And what about euskara (basque language)?
“Distancia” léxica entre las diferentes lenguas europeas [ENG] | Los antisistema son: said
[…] » noticia original (elms.wordpress.com) […]
Alen said
Add Bosnian Language next to croatian and serbian, as it’s slightly different from both…
John Doe said
The size that you have set in your graphic with the number of speakers doesn’t correspond to reality, my advice, you should add an additional legend with a ranking number of speakers of each language to make it look more clear that languages have more speakers.
Bendis said
I think that the Albanian language should be placed closer to the Romance languages and away with Slavic languages.
Khispa said
If there is catalan and galician, I wonder where is basque. Because I’m very curios where is it drawed.
Aritz said
What about the basque lenguage?
Nemesis said
Great work!
Being Catalan, I would only add that Catalan language has a minor influence from French..
It’s not too big, but certain stuff like the use of apostrophe, verbal forms, or some vowels can resemble French in a way.. also some words are shared, or derived
Also i’m learning Italian lately, and it’s amazing to see how many peculiar words are shared!
But of course italian has a completely different mechanic than Catalan/Spanish in certain aspects… some of it is more simple, while some of it seems needlesly complex to me..
Gahndi said
Where is Basque?
jc said
and where is basque? i think the oldest language of europe should appear…
D.Warr said
Odd that Greek stands alone…Kalimera
George m said
isnt it??!!Are you Greek ?
Pado said
What about Basque language???
Lena said
If I understand correctly SLO is Slovenian and SVK – Slovak. Then I wonder why do the authors think that there are more speakers of Slovenian than of Slovak language? Thinking logically Slovenia has cca 2 million and Slovakia cca 5 million people..
Cunnilinguist said
They always make a mess with Slovenia and Slovakia … too similar name, too similar flag, nothing new 😉
ibra said
No basque no party
On node.js promises, filtering and lexical distances in Europe | Quick bites said
[…] Lexical distance among European languages – Nice graph representation how close we in Europe speak to each other. […]
Aitor aranburu said
Where is the oldest live lenguague of europe? Vasque or euskara
Zelenka Balázs said
Hungarian is far away any European languages, but you missed out the Basque language. This is more isolated
Alessandra Ribolini said
Reblogged this on Alessandra Ribolini.
Ezra said
I wonder where Romani fits in. I understand the modern language has several different dialects influenced by the majority language in each location.
Jordi said
CATalan is of the same family as PROvençal, both of them right in the middle between SPAnish and FREnch
Jan Tisztaság said
What about Basque and Maltese?
– also non Indo-eEropean.
Plismon Iaith said
Where’s Corse?!
wiel said
Any clue what “SR” between Polish and Czech stands for?
noname said
il Piemontese PMT???? 3.000.000 speakers unesco language but in italy is not recognized !! ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,…………………………………………..
William said
Looks rubbish to me – a usefull method is a measurement of transparency of languages, which shows the similarities between languages. E.g. English and Dutch are over 95% transparant. So are Danish and Dutch – why is there no line there?
Joxe said
And what about basque language (euskara)? I can’t find this on the map!
Xino xano said
Catalan should be closer to French and in any case, very close to Provençal (the real name is Occitan. Provençal is just a dialect of Occitan).
martin said
where is basque?
Da said
where is euskera?
grege said
A really bad graphic, specially with the population, have you made it with a dice?
Marsme said
Where is the basque language?
Nineu said
And Basque?
Itsaso said
Where is Euskera? or Basque language?
bengrafton said
Reblogged this on bengrafton.
Faruk Gjini said
Gjuha tregon lashtesine,dijen dhe historine e njerezimit ne pergjithesi.(E para ishte fjala)!!!!!!!!! Ne rastin konkret pozicionimi i gjuhes Shqipe ne rrenjen ose fillesat e gjuheve Europiane tregon ne nje fare menyre fallcifikimin qe i eshte bere historise se shkruar boterore dhe ne vecanti asaj Europiane nga historiografia e politizuar e interesave te fitimtarit ose me te fortit ne dem te kombit Shqiptar dhe te vertetes.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
jlba said
And Euskera?
Borja 'Di GoldenBoy' said
Basque?
John Tucker said
Interesting etymological and epistemological point, DanielR. What is the scientific basis for your comment?
dim said
…feels kind of lonely….heheheheh
Love from Greece.
Bambu said
Since when the Catalan has not lexical relation with the French? It makes not sense at all, the data used for generate this graph is not correct or not enough big to get a real thing.
Anais said
This is cool. I particularly enjoy seeing my native tongues sitting apart from most, as they do.
Jeff S said
The French “c’est a dire” was directly translated into English: “That is to say…” Another minor example of French syntax being absorbed into English. These are quite minor. Actually 60% of the 10,000 most frequently used words in English derive from French via the Norman Conquest.” English has also absorbed huge numbers of words willy-nilly from other languages. “Willy-nilly” itself is a reshaping from Classical Latin: “Volle-Nolle” (pronounced [wo-lay no-lay], meaning, “he wants, he doesn’t want” (or whether he wants it or not). “Ketchup” derives from Cantonese. “Skirt” and shirt are doublets borrowed from Norwegian, “Dollar” from Dutch “Taler.”
Zortzigarren said
Where is the Basque Language?
Geurtz said
Where is Basque? Over 800.000 speakers in Europe and by far the most ancient language in the continent!
Estira la llengua said
Catalan, during centuries, has been considered the same language as Occitan. And by the way, Provençal is a dialect of Occitan; not a language itself. And, on the other hand, Catalan and French are as close as Catalan and Italian…
haatik said
And the Basque??
Pepa said
PRO = provençal i guess.
But “Rm”? It’s killing me. Rumansch?
Kapitain Planet said
What about Basque?
Unai Gorrotxategi (@ishikawa_) said
where is basque?
Alex said
there must be a link between Catalan and French !!!
GaryBellamy said
Where is Basque in all of this? DLI used to teach it was a separate root language like Albanian per Prof “Magoo”..(his shortened Basque name)
lucas gring said
Euskera is missed!!
aitor said
and Euskera?
tanierik said
The amount of Slovak speakers (Svk) is bigger than that of Slovenian speakers (SLO), but the picture shows otherwise. Mixing up Slovak and Slovenian is a common mistake. Here, however, just the example of the author´s “highest” reliability.
Cunnilinguist said
Yup, they always make a mess with Slovenia and Slovakia … too similar name, too similar flag, nothing new 😉
miquel amengual said
basque language missing….
filogarte said
Reblogged this on Filogarte and commented:
Estudiando ruso me estoy alejando más de lo que pensaba 🙂
Jan-Erik Løken said
BOK = Bokmål (most common version of Norwegian). NN = Nynorsk – a less common version of Norwegian.
alfab said
It’s a pity that we cannot see the distance between Provenzal and Catalan.
Joe said
And what about the Basque Country and its language? It’s one of the eldest languages in the world and different to any other one!
Joaquin said
Where is Euskera? Out of frame?
Matt said
What is the unit of lexical distance and how is it worked out?
dewex said
Where is Basque on the diagram?
Francisco said
Basque is missing. It is a million miles of lexical distance from any of the other European languages anyway, but worth mentioning though.
txapu1 said
No place for the Basque?
Dritan said
There is true. It is time for the Independent state of Basque countries.
encovert said
Where is the basque language?
Jon said
What happen with the Basque?
elquevulguis said
I am Catalan, I speak Spanish and French,
I am pretty convinced that Catalan is closer to French than Spanish is to French.
formiga said
I agree. For instance: table is taula in CAT and table in FRE but mesa in SPA. Window is finestra in CAT and fenetre in FRE but ventana in SPA. And so on… Catalan was related to French and Occitan until the 15th century. Afterwards and because of the Spanish invasions, it started being influenced by Spanish, too.
Anna said
I couldn´t find basque, that is also an european language.
Estelle Dali said
I still do not understand how come so many people mix Latvian language with Russian, I mean they’re so different, so far from each other, how can it sound the same to someone??! I hope they’ll know the difference some day.
András said
Hungarian has nothing to do with finno-ugric languages. There exists not even one artifact, that can proof this bullshit finno-ugric theory. This theory was made by the Habsburgs in order to supress the truth: Hungarian is a very ancient language (perhaps the oldest language in the world), much older than any european language. We have for example a lot of words that are identical (!) with words which were found on sumerian clay plates. We have perhaps the oldest writing in the world. There are several artifacts with the Hungarian rune writing, which were made 6000 BC, or even 30000 BC (in the pyramids in Bosnia).
ME said
I totally agree. This(map) seems very un-researched
Grainsmith said
Here’s another well-educated young urban Hungarian professional revealing “the truth”. You forgot to mention the Hungarians also invented gun-powder and compass before the Chinese and drank hot chocolate 4000 BC.
Vocabulary Study | Ms. Little's Class said
[…] Source for the quote and diagram above […]
Byron D-B said
Where would Basque be? (Did I miss it somehow?)
Mts said
https://elms.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/elms_baltoslavictypology_v4.ppt
Points to a far more detailed set of slides which address many of the issues mentioned. Unclear about copyright protocols plus am a bear of very little brain, so obviously interdict this if it infringes anyone’s rights. (-;
AABB said
There’s actually a lot of mess in that powerpoint file.
E.g.:
Strongly doubt if there’s a neuter gender as such in Lithuanian (slide 9);
Some word examples (table, slide 4) are misspelled or use non-nominative noun case – Polish “ists” (go?); Lithuanian “rankų” – stands for “of hands” (genitive plural) not “hand”; some spellings are semi-phonetic, some others regular spelling.
😦
Ivi said
there are some mistakes in this presentation
Peter Green said
Where do you place Basque?
Valentyn Solomko said
at left bottom
ermir dibra said
Where is Turkey in this map?!
Arturo Malvestito said
Turkey is not in Europe (at least more than 90% of it), right?
ME said
turkey isn’t in europe
Olta said
I love my language u are unique “Albania”
bujar said
Albanian language is a unique and the oldest one. It is the roots of Indo European. All the others diverted from Albanian language. We can learn any other European language much faster than any other one. This is because we do have a rich alphabet enabling us easier acceptance of other words often similar with Albanian ones. There is no single Albanian, eveng young children, who does not speak minimum two languages. I do speak 4 languages and able to communicate in at least three more.
Lexical Distance Among the Languages of Europe / Chomsky, Tyshchenko and Albanian | A Norm Al said
[…] reading this article which was immediately recognized among my friends because it distinguished Albanian as a stand […]
Daniel said
There some inacurate representations on the map, altough the idea is brilliant and enlightening. (Congrats, BTW). One such inacuracy is the fact that on the map there is no connection between Romanian and the surrounding slavic languages (Bulgarian, Slovak, Serbian, Ukrainian, Russian, Polish). Romanian is a Romanche language in its structure and most of its vocabulary, but it shares at least 20% of its vocabulary with Slavic. Those words can be found with similar or related meaning in one or more of the Slavic modern languages mentioned above.
Daniel said
Also, the connection in lexical terms between Romanian and Albanian is so thin that it is negligible in comparison with Romanian’s inclusion not only of Slavic, but also with Turkish, Hungarian and even German vocabulary…
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Frank Institoris said
Some people need to do some proper research before making comments about something they obviously know nothing about. I’m a Hungarian whose mother language is Hungarian which I speak fluently. I was born im serbia and my parents speak serbian/croatian. I know romanians, have family in Russia and the ukraine who speak all those languanges. Also know quite a few turkish people. I know for a fact that none of the these languages have any distiguishable similarities to Hungarian in language apart from the pronunciation of odd letters or words which have most likely been borrowed from each other in the last few hundred years. As for only ten percent of the current vocabulary being original Hungarian is probably true in regard to very ancient Hungarian, it is not correct for the current vocabulary in respect to the viewpoint of borrowing as even with “modern” hungarian, it is still very unique with no other language speaker coming close to understanding hungarian other than english influenced adapted words which have only come about in the last hundred years or so.
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Landa said
Albanian language does not have any similarity with Slovenian language…
Besir Bajrami said
If the pre-Greek Pelasgian is survived in Albanian language, than this chart should be different, as we now the Pelasgians (or whoever was their name), were the core of PIE or the latter Indo-Europeans. If it not so, at least the first Indo-Europeans in contact with autochthonous have contributed of affected in their language. So, take a look on these people. That’s why Albanian should be proven that is connected with all these languages, but not from the later period of borrowing, but from the period when these languages were created.
The Pelasgian language was split in ancient Greek and Latin, and from these two languages are created many other Indo-European languages. So pre-Latin or pre-Greek idiom is the core and this core is more preserved in Albanian language.
As Jean-Claude Faveyrial wrote in his “History of Albania”:
“…instead to draw from Albanians borrowed words from Latin and Greek languages, would not it be better to see the borrowed words in Latin and Greek from Pelasgian language, which passes, irrefutably, as first language arrived in Italy and in Greece, and which naturally transmitted to Albanians as the only language preserved to our days ?
Let’s assume that the Albanian is poor, ie, it is not cultivated. But, if we take off from more cultivated languages the scientific words borrowed from others, in what a bad condition they will lay ?!
Edmund Martin Geldart, in his “Modern Greek language”:
The popular notion of the Greeks themselves that the Albanians are the ancient Pelasgians, may be after all not very far from the truth. Certain is, that in Albanian, in spite of its corrupt or modernized state, as seen in the poverty of its case endings etc., we do undoubtedly find the meeting point of Greek and Latin.
The fact that we find in Albanian the Greek and Latin sounds combined, proves general identity of the modern with the ancient Greek pronunciation to something very like demonstration.
…Albanian presents us, in a mutilated shape, with the Graeco-Italic language before it had split into Greek and Italic.
We have already seen that Albanian preserves many of the Sanscrit forms which Latin and Greek have lost… (pages 128-137)
Another work upon the Albanian language is that of F. Ritter von Xylander (Die Sprache der Albanesesn oder Schkipetaren, 1835), who has elucidated this subject, and established the principal facts upon a firm basis. An account of the positions at which Xylander arrived will be found in Prichard (The Physical History of Mankind, vol. iii. pp. 477-482).
Translating from his book in German language:
“Words of Albanian language, without substantial changes and partly from the root, we also found in other languages, as in the ancient Greek, new Greek, in Latin, in Romanian languages, in old and new German, Swedish, Danish, English, Slavic, Persian, Arabic, Celtic, Basque and ancient Indian language.
The extension suffix node and its more developed flexion, more than in Basque, Icelandic, Swedish and Danish, is not found in any of those languages that have influenced later on Albanian.
Compliance of Albanian with Persian and Sanskrit show about communion and direct than the intermediate relationship, common relations with the trunk than with the people who show up later in history … ”
Robert Gordon Latham in his “The eastern origin of the Celtic nations proved by a comparison of their dialects”:
“They (Albanians and Basks) survived to suggest to ethnologists of the nineteenth century a time (long anterior to the dawn of history) when a complex series of kindred populations was continuously spread over all Europe, from Albania to Finland, from Spain to Scandinavia-a series of populations now broken up and separated”
“So did the Albanians of Albania. These survived, because the inaccessible nature of their areas had preserved them from the fate of their congeners in Gaul, Germany, Italy, Greece, and Sarmatia. They survived, because woods and mountains had been to them what the cold of the Arctic Circle had been to the Laps, and his swamps and fens to the Finlander.”
+ Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza’s “Genes, Languages and People”, in page 163 he wrote: In our tree, several languages have an early, separate origin: Albanian, Armenian, and later, though somewhat less clearly, Greek. On page 164 is the IE languages tree, with Albanian dating 9,000 years, followed by Armenian at 8,500 and then Greek 7,000.
And many, many, other scientists who have the same conclusion for the Albanian. At least, you have to take them into consideration !
Orges Kokoshari said
How is possible, The Albanian language connects to Greek before German,it is so laughable… from linguistic and geographical point of view.
Greek and Albanian should be simply swapped in this map.
Ainars said
Where is Latgalian LTG?
Elena Maria Sorban said
Romanian is much more close to Italian and distant to Albanian. I am not a Philologist, only a simple Romanian intellectual, so I can only recommend you to find more information about. The scheme seems me generally suggestive.
Iker said
Where is Basque (Euskera)?
The Basque language is the oldest in Europe, still alive is the biggest treasure we have. The European culture has in the Basque language the most interesting and valuable linguistic form. Unique in the world. And beautiful.
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krox said
Actually Estonian and Hungarian have hundreds of similar words, in spite of our Sumerian fellow Hungarians say here. They are not the same words but clearly similar. Btw I speak both languages fluently, one of them is my mother tongue. But Turkish should also be on the map. Estonian, Finnish and Hungarian are related to Turkish.
mary said
I’m curious how far Turkish would be from these other languages. Part of Turkey is technically in Europe (west of the Bosphorus), and I know of Roma in the Balkans who only speak Turkish…. so really, the language should be included…… and would be interesting to see, since it’s from another language family.
mary said
oh yes, and Romani, speaking of the Roma…..
Finn said
Hi,
Very intresting though not a complete map or chart. I was teached that Hungarian is part of the Finno-Ugric group but have never understood it completely as Finland and Hungary have quite a distance geographicly and I being a Finn I don´t understand a word of it. Also would like to inform that in the northern parts of Finland, Sweden, Norway ans Russia they is an ethnic Group called Saami whom speaks all an dialect of Saami but hey have more than 10 different influance of other languages. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sami_languages
ME said
Could someone possibly decipher all the abriviations and post a key somewhere?
Maria said
This work for the continent of Europe seems really interesting indeed! As long as the clues for the lines connecting the points (circles) and the points keep on increasing, the map comes closer to reality, fun is more and evolution is for the best 😉 This chart is a good start, more research and reconfiguration on it would be of benefit! cheers (wasser ≡ water ≡ woda ≡ voda ≡ eau ≡ uje ≡ ύδωρ (νερό) ≡ … we ‘re closer than we think)
acb said
Is there a CSV file (or similar) of the raw data available anywhere? It’d be good to make this into an interactive visualisation using D3 or similar.
Jim AlexandratosJim said
From the main heading lexical, distance and Europe are Greek words…. about 38% of the English Language comprises of Greek words if you take words that are made of part Greek words and endings this goes up to 68%……….
Snowy Bottles said
It would be interesting to see where the “Scots” language, sits.
I would guess in between modern day Norwegian (norse) English and French..
Also, would the Sami languages form part of the finno-ugric group?
Jen said
I would have expected to see Basque on this map as well, being a language (albeit non-Indo European) spoken by ca 720,000 people.
Lexical Distance Among the Languages of Europe | Zero Due Design Blog said
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Brussels' Fernando said
I would go one step further than the comment of Peter Green: the fact the absence of the Basque language – arguably the oldest living European language and most probably the most difficult to locate in this graphic – can only be explained by two reasons:
– a gross lack of profesionalism (since we are talking here about someone who has evidently shown a deep understanding of European languages either indoeuropean or not) or
– a political biais once again (this is not political paranoia because I repeat it is obvious the philiogic knowledge demonstrated)
formiga said
Which unit do you use to measure lexical distance?
Cra CraCra said
Ok English has taken many words from French and from Latin, but French comes from Latin ergo…
dev said
m sikhna chahta hu english meri english blkul week h
Marina Radogost said
Not perfectly accurate, especially regarding the East European languages, sorry to say.
First of all, Croatian and Serbian are not two separate languages (tired of repeating it already): it is one only language, unique for having two names and two alphabets (due to historical and political circumstances). It is either that, or they are the closest pair of languages in the world, because they share say 95% of the vocabulary and a bit more of the grammar. But than you must hurry and give the language “status” to American English as opposed to British English, and to Argentinian Spanish as opposed to European Spanish, because the difference between Serbian and Croatian is pretty much like that. I say this as native speaker of the two-headed dragon SRB/CRO and a fluent speaker both of English and Spanish
Furtherly:
– Albanian has no connection whatsoever with Slovenian, but with Serbian/Croatian (although not nearly as strong as shown here, since it is not a Slavic language).
– I can’t claim anything regarding the connection between Albanian and Romanian, since I don’t speak neither, but I strongly doubt there is a significative one – the only possible connection between the two I can think of would be through the influence of Turkish, which certainly wouldn’t be as strong as shown in this graph),
– Belarusian is overwhelmingly far closer to Russian than to Bulgarian, to which it is no closer than to SRB/CRO or to Slovak, for instance;
– Macedonian is nearly as close to Serbian/Croatian as to Bulgarian (not shown at all)
– Catalan is at least as close to French as it is to Italian (I’d say more, but I won’t split hairs), which is not shown at all
– Greek and… wait, Dutch??
– What happened to Basque? Yes, it’s not a Indo-European, but still – it exists in Europe and has acquired some connections with the neighbouring languages
Lexical Distance Among the Languages of Europe « Etymologikon™ | Elio e le storie tese said
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paintermezzo said
anyámborogass, méghogy a magyar, mint finnugor nyelv…!
missleksy said
I’d like to say about a link between romanian language and slavic languages which was not mentioned here..
Fiona said
Arabic has a big influence on so many of our languages – it’s a huge omission. So many of the Mediterranean languages have Arabic as does English … it’ would be interesting to see how it’s included here.
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Leutrim Kosova said
Albanian ‘The Divine Language’.Only God knows how and when was it created.It’s special.Proud to be my mother tongue
jan said
A true Macedonian knows that his language is the origin of all others 😀
Aggelos said
A true Macedonian knows that Alexander the Great, his teacher Aristotelis and all the race of the ancient Macedonians were speaking Greek because they are part of the Greek nation.
Shati said
Though Albanian has borrowed loads of words from (whoever conquered the region) namely Latin such as aux werb “est” to be alb. “është”; Slavic languages, namely Serbian, srb. “shta?” what alb. “çka” ofter pronounced in some regions “shka”; Greek and last but not least Turkish. Albanian itself must have just few original words from the proto-Albanians, nonetheless it keeps its original structure and that differs it from the other languages.
Lately in the region of Albania, Italian is taking over.
Hristian Carabulea said
Hi. Is the Romanian language really so far from the rest of the Latin languages? My professor of Italian in US told me once that Romanian is one of the most Latin languages…
escrever como? said
I have some doubts about the Greek and its relation to Italian (because of the Latin): shouldn’t be closer than to French?
Aggelos said
Loukianos, a Roman writer said that the Latin language was too poor until the Romans started using words and parts of the Greek language. So, Latin language became better thanks to the Greek language and this means that every language that is related to Latin has its base in the Greek.
Lexical distance between European languages | Design Interaction said
[…] data from linguistics research by Kostiantyn Tyshchenko, Teresa Elms clustered European languages in this network graph. If you look closely, you might wonder why English is considered a …read […]
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choeferle said
Reblogged this on Southeast Schnitzel and commented:
A friend shared this with me recently. While I realize that this post has been out there for a few years, I still think it’s a good visualization of how western languages are related to each other.
Valentyn Solomko said
Please change ” K. Tyshchenko (1999), Metatheory of Linguistics. (Published in Russian.)” to “K. Tyshchenko (2000), Metatheory of Linguistics. (Published in Ukrainian)”
[NEWS] Some Tuesday links | A Bit More Detail said
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paff said
So ..with simple words, Greek Language is the mother language most of all! No surprized …
Puff said
With simple words you are a morron!
Martin said
actually the population speaking the language is pretty off… at least the slavic ones … cause more than 3 million speak slovak, and slovenian … that surprises me tbh since no one outside of slovenia speak slovenian and slovenia has a tiny population, same goes for bulgarian … waay more people speak bulgarian
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Meg said
You all missed an important point: “The original research data for the chart comes from K. Tyshchenko (1999), Metatheory of Linguistics. (Published in Russian.)”
The population is off because the data is OLD. Some languages are not included because the original researcher did not include them, probably because there wasn’t any easily available data or corpora to study.
But there is no way to tell because the maker of this chart didn’t include a good way to find the original study (title of journal it was published in?)
We just have to accept that some of the flaws in this chart come from the limitations of the original study.
Peter Herz said
A very interesting chart.
Is English, apart from its technical vocabulary, really 60% Romance in vocabulary? I think not. It seems that every concept used by English-speakers has both a Teutonic and a Romance term. This was driven home when I read John Rawls in Political Science, in which he famously “discovered” that “justice is fairness” (English synonyms, one Latin, one Germanic). Further, they talk of how the “deep structures” of English are Germanic; although English is so grammatically streamlined (a process begun when the Danes settled among the Anglo-Saxons) as to be almost a Creole of something.
Further, does linguistic distance among languages decrease with the higher the education of the speakers in question? People whose educations may have included exposure to certain languages might readily recognize a number of technical, legal, and likewise terms used by speakers of a rather “distant” language far more quickly than someone with a less extensive education, especially if those specialized terms are drawn from common sources, such as Latin and Greek for much of Europe.
kellyinmadrid said
Reblogged this on Knocking on Doors and commented:
Lexical Distance Among the Languages of Europe…very interesting.
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J said
Fun chart but curious why the minor link is shown between Swedish and Finnish but Russian is all the way on the other corner. Russian certainly has minor links with Finnish language, as well as links between modern Russian and English (where many words are borrowed).
I understand a simple chart showing all that would be difficult, but certain minor factors like that are misleading. Overall, I really liked this chart, though.
It is true that many minor languages are missing while others are not, but I assumed that was done mostly for the sake of brevity rather than total completism.
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Gipsy Jules said
There are more than a million Vasque speakers, however it is not present in the diagram. I guess it has been sacrificed for the shake of clarity, given its isolated position among European languages.
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[…] heard or experienced that Estonian is not the easiest language to master. It sounds and is composed unlike most other languages, which means that English, German, Spanish, French, or Russian are more similar to each other than […]
Lexical Distance Among European Languages : Randnotizen said
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edesorban said
Reblogged this on Genea-Search and commented:
Hungarians have always been on the edge.