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. Lexical distance is measured by calculating the percentage of overlap in cognate terms between language pairs (a measure of lexical proximity), then taking the inverse.
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.)
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
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!
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.
Wouldn’t investigating vowel length /quality help?
I know that both this article and this comment are from a while ago, but you could look into theories of dialectometry. Suggested authors: Heeringa, Nerbonne, Stanford. Some great stuff post 2013.
Looking at the closeness between English & French perhaps gives insight to your leanings towards being slightly Romantic? (D)
There is no “closeness” between English and French. Languages are systems, but unlike mathematics, languages are highly OPEN, porous systems, open to every influence imaginable. English is basically Germanic, because it was brought from the area later called “Germany” by the Angles and the Saxons, who were fleeing the chaos following the collapse of the Roman Empire. The British Isles, being small and easily accessible from the Continent by boat, were always subject to invasion. The Vikings invaded from Denmark, then decided to stay since there was arable land and a plentiful supply of potential wives. In this way, a number of Danish loan words were imported into English, and stuck. The French invaded in 1066, and stayed until the English developed a strong enough army to throw the French out of the country. But THOUSANDS of French VOCABULARY had been osmosed into the English LANGUAGE by then, often with the French spelling unchanged or only slightly changed. This accounts for “beauty” (Fr. “beaute’ “), which is horrendous-looking in English, but a common vowel combination in French sounded as “O” (oiseau, beau, veau, eau, bureau, flambeau, Rousseau, Clemenceau, Trudeau, chateau, etc.). Later, when Latin became a scholarly “lingua franca” across Europe, English gorged countless Latin loan words, which had sticking power. The medical field adopted a huge number of terms from Greek (pneumonia, hepatology, otolaryngology, pharynx, etc, etc.).
Still, English is fundamentally a Germanic language mongrelized by a huge number of vocabulary borrowings from Danish, French, Latin and Greek.
===========================================================================================
On another subject, where is Yiddish among the Germanic language group? Yiddish is basically a variant of Middle High German, with borrowings from Hebrew due to the constant use of Hebrew in religious study and prayer.. The Teutonic knights doing warm-ups for the First Crusade massacred Jewish villages up and down the Rhineland, so Jewish survivors migrated east to Poland, which happened to be relatively hospitable at the time. In Poland, Yiddish osmosed Polish loan words. Some Jews migrated farther east to Russia, where Yiddish picked up Ukrainian and Russian loan vocabulary.
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
Well, coming from Latin and coming from French sounds like 60% Romance language?
I favour the view of English as a hybrid language
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.
@88costa: I believe the chart is showing Albanian as connected to Slovene, not Slovak.
@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.
Gary is right. SLO is Slovenian. Svk is Slovak. BTW . Czech and Slovak understand to each other 90-95%. We do not have any problems to understand. I am Slovak. Understand very well Polish. Serbian is for me more understandable language than Croatian. I do not understand to Slovenian, i do not know why. I speak Russian but to understand ukrainian is problem for me. it is like mix of russian, polish and slovak words.
Yes, but many of our most basic words come from the Germanic side and our grammar remains Germanic, albeit simplified, rather than Romance. Germanic languages tend to be stress-timed, which English is, Romance languages tend to be syllable-timed… etc etc.
Raw percentage of vocabulary is only part of the picture.
I would see a connection between German and western slavic languages, since they lived close to each other: Austrian Hungarian,…
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.
Hungarian is not slavic at all, or even Indo-European. It’s Finno-Ugric and so unrelated to any of the languages surrounding it geographically.
Hungarian is not slavic
Hungarian is not a Slavic language
“I would see a connection between German and western slavic languages, since they lived close to each other: Austrian Hungarian,…”
😀 😀 😀 😀 😀 😀
You made my day….
First we not lived close to each other, we were a Monarchi…..
Second, Hungarian nothing have to do with “western slavic languages”..
Some relations are correct, some aren’t, and a huge part is missing. Eg. all Slavic languages, not only Polish, have striking similarities with Lithuanian. Serbian, Croatian and Slovakian have a lot in common with Hungarian – Hungarians assimilated a lot of Slavic neighbors and adopted plenty of their lexic (names of weekdays, plants, fruits, etc). German language has plenty of Slavic words for plants, natural phenomenons, “Buch” (Book) comes from Slavic “Bukva”, etc. Greek language had a deep and thorough influence over so called “central Balkanic group of languages” (Serbian, Bulgarian, Tzintzar), giving them plenty of accents, intelectual and spiritual notions, grammar solutions, etc. Tzintzar language is missing from the map, it is the language of the autochtone inhabitants of Balkans which were there before Greeks, Serbs, Bulgarians, Albanians and others arrived to Balkans, still alive and spoken by about half million people in Balkans. Gypsy language is missing, too. Vlach language (Vlachs are inhabitants of Eastern Serbia, with language related to Romanian, about 200-300 thousand speakers). Romanian language has a lot in common with Serbian and Bulgarian. Albanian language has much more in common with Turkish, Tajik, Azer and other Cavcasus languages than with Greek. Jidish is missing from the map, it is another European language. Laponian (Sami) is missing…
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.
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).
(RM) Romanian, (PRO) Provencal, guessing from the proximity to Polish that SR is Sorbian.
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. 🙂
Sorry, missed a letter: …. they can speak their mother ….
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
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?
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.
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.), 🙂 .
I am not sure if Sorbian (lužická srbština) still exist. if they are not already asimililated. the lived in east part of Germany, close to you, to Czech republic,
I think, ROM is Romanian, but what is RM?
To Astheart.
Sorbian is a language that is directly between Polish and Czech and it should be listed as two – Upper and Lower. And as for your minority referral below – there are large populations (mainly of Upper, although me and quite a few are Lower and also we are referred to as Wendish where we live instead of Sorbian) who migrated to America and Australia where we work hard to maintain our unique identities and reclaim our language just as the Czechs did.
It’s a shame you never heard of us prior and although you are a linguist maybe you should chat to your linguist friends who are well versed in us and our classification as to why we are between the two instead of just dismissing us, our language and what linguists understand our language to be.
You can hear the Lower language via internet radio and I’m guessing the one you have heard of is Upper due to it being more prevalent.
“Rm” probably is Romansh, which is spoken in Switzerland; “PRO,” Provençal; and “Sr” is probably Sorbian.
I would have expected Romansh to have closer ties to German. To see it written, it looks like french, but written with a German spelling style.
rethoroman (Rm) in Swiss, provancal (Pro) in South-France, sorb in South-East-Germany.
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.
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.”
SRD is probably a language of Sardenia.
Sardu is actually more than one language, from a purely linguistic point of view.
@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. 🙂
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.
@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…
“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.
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, 🙂 )
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.
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.
Only some interesting details:http://vlast.cz/luzice/ 🙂
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.
Most Sorbian speaker nowadays have very strong German accent, this may add to the confusion in understanding.
I would not only put Sorbian between Czech and Polish, as it was correctly done, but I would also add a line from Slovak to Sorbian (maybe even move Slovak closer than the other two), and it is indeed a language. Two languages actually. As we have been cut off from the other Slavic languages around the 17th century, our languages show a huge German influence, grammatical and lexical, so one could also draw a line to German as well. It may be hard to understand at first because the pronounciation especially of Upper Sorbian is more German than Slavic, while Lower Sorbian is using many German loan words, but I am sure with a little practice you will understand a lot. I can understand a lot of Czech, Polish and Slovak through Sorbian.
@Astheart: you are so wrong on so many levels… Yes, Silesian is a valid language – or, as some linguists call it to disperse political tensions: ethnolect. You grew up in Silesia… Where? Because being a linguist (I am one, specialised in slavic languages) can clearly say that Silesian is a group of dialects, so it cannot be “a dialect”. Moreover, it is being claimed by some Czech and Polish linguists as part of their language – how come it could be a dialect of both? It cant. Furthermore, written forms have been present for well over 100 years, although not widespread. But after the fall of communism and ability to revive our language, we see more and more things written in it: web pages, books (including Silesian translations from classic Greek and Latin literature), advertisements, mobile operating systems etc etc. The only problem is we are not allowed to school our children, as our language is not recognised by Polish government (where the overwhelming majority of Silesians live).
Rm is most likely Romantsch (or Rheto-Roman), while Romanian is abbreviated as ROM.
Romantsch is spoken in Switzerland, but is closer to Ladin (spoken in Friuli and in the Dolomiti mountains in Italy) than any other language listed.
A problem in this sort of researches is that it is very difficult to define a language. As a Ladin speaking person I am strongly biased in considering Ladin a language, with Romantsch a Ladin dialect, but I don’t know what is the prevalent opinion in linguistic researchers.
Would be nice to see how distanced Georgian, Armenian and Turkish languages are from all the rest of these European languages.
Armenian is at least an Indo-European language, but is missing on the chart.
Sorry but is no Turkish language, Pseudo-Turkish language is a mix of Mongolian root, mixed with : Arabic, Persian, Assyrian,Greek and Albanian.
it has no european roots at all, it comes from the caucas region so is influenced by arabic languages to the south …
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.
If you look at turkish, hungarian and finnish, you wil see that they have got excatly the same structure.
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…
Provençal / Sardinian 🙂
PRO = ??
SRD : Sardinian
PRO- Provencal
Provençal and Sardo.
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.
Pls erase my post above as I didn’t see Virginia worked ouy meanings.
Sorry
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!
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Romanian has more loanwords from Hungarian and Turkish than from Albanian, but the graph doesn’t show that
because of the trakian – illirian relationship! 😛 not dacian- roman!!! 😉
If you see carefully Romanians , and Albanians look alike.
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.
Albanians have many Latin words because they were subejcts of the Roman rule, ant these Latin words are shared with Romanians. Please refer to Sextil Puscariu, Limba Romana, Privire generala.
And the distance between the romanian and hungarian?
it is correct! I don’t know rumanian words in Hungarian languages, may be oláh <— vlach (earlier name of Rumanian nation).
Just about accurate in the image above. There are some loanwords but they aren’t even close otherwise.
Completely different language families: Romanian is Romance and Indo-European; Hungarian is Finno-Ugric and non-Indo European. 🙂 So despite the geographic proximity, they are totally unrelated linguistically. Of course, the same is true to all of Hungary’s geographical neighbors, all of which are Indo-European languages.
Basque?
Like the Finno-Ugric languages, Basque isn’t Indo-European.
That’s just a statement of an unrelated fact, not a real reason to not include it. Finno-Ugric languages were still included here because the chart is for “languages of Europe” and not only “Indo-European languages of Europe”.
But the Finno-Ugric languages ARE on that chart, whereas Basque is very clearly not. Nor is Basque related to the Finno-Ugric languages, much as some linguists would like to claim.
but this is a chart of “languages of europe” last time I checked, the basque country IS in europe…
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Lexical Distance Among the Languages of Europe
What country is this between Polish and Czech?
No Country but language : Sorbian
It probably refers to the Sorbian languages, spoken in in the Lusatia region of eastern Germany.
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.
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. 🙂
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.
As a Czech, Slovak native speaker, with Russian as second language and quite a lot of friends in other Slavic nation, I can tell you Czech and Slovak are actually quite far away, even maybe almost as Cze/Slovenian as on the graph. Just because everyone over 40 has both languages native does not mean they are that close. As for Polish, it is the least easy to understand from Slavic languages for me. I need Russian actually as a key to understanding a lot of it. On the other hand Slovenian, Chroatian, Serbian were quite natural to pick up a lot of the meaning from hearing people talk.
Łużyce (język serbsko-łużycki, po niemiecku Sorbisch)
maybe Sorbic, a minority in germany close to the polish and czech borders.
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.
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…
Not a country–a language, Sorbian.
no country just a little nation, perhabs sorbs (wends)… ?????
Sorbs are what is left of Wends (Wenden) in Germany.
It’s not countries but languages. Silesian is the asnwer.
Silesian is a dialect spoken in the region I live in. It cannot be called a language, and it is not Sorbian for sure.
I wonder where Basque fits into the picture….
It doesn’t. Basque doesn’t fit any picture. It’s a language on its own, not related to any other living language.
Not genetically, but it would be interesting to see its lexical relation to nearby languages, which is not necessarily dependent on a genetic relationship (cf. Germanic English having a strong Franco-Latin influence in vocabulary). Albanian is generally thought to be a standalone language within IE, but it gets represented here nonetheless.
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.
Basque is not an Indo-European language.
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!
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.
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.
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…
Sorry, I correct:
When you say “Among the Languages of Europe” you mean “Among SOME OF the Languages of Europe”
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).
Well, it says “major” languages, and Basque certainly is majorer than most of the Celtic languages that are listed, for example.
Basque has around a milion of speakers!
sorry you can’t include catalan and galician and not include basque, come on…
Celtic languages are Indo-European/have an organic relationship with other languages on the chart. The only non-Indo-European languages on there are the Finno-Ugrics, and the only one of those that has a similarly small number of native speakers is Estonian.
As a language isolate, Basque is not a language that one would automatically include in a chart specifically designed to show relationships with other languages.
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.
Because that’s what it’s called: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_languages
This is the conventional way of referring to the descendants of Latin. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_languages.
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
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.
It is the scientific name for that language group.
Reblogged this on systems perestroika – éminence grise.
Where are Corsican and Basque?
Where is the Basque language?
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.
….and where is Malta’s native language : Maltese 🙂 ?
Maltese is a Semitic language, not an Indo-European language.
A creole between Romance, Germanic, and Semitic?
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?
Frisian and Norwegian Bokmål:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisian_languages
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokm%C3%A5l
BOK = ??
FRI = probably Friesian (Frisian)
Frisian and Bokmål.
Frisian? I have no idea what Bok is, though.
Fri frisian, northern dutch and northwestern german “minority”, BOK norwegian bokmal?
Friesian? And Norwegian Bokmal (they have two semi-separate languages in Norway apparently)
“Fri” is Frisian, and “Bok” is Bokmal, the written Norwegian language.
Fríz (frisen, frises) and bokmal (norwegian)
Frisian.
I am also unsure about BOK.
Fri is probably Frisian (Frysk, should be fry, not fri, but they are apparently not using standard language codes). Bok is Norwegian Bokmål.
I think that “Bok”/”NN” refers to the two norwegian official languages “Bokmål” and “Nynorsk”. Just a guess though.
Fri is Frisian…. I am confused by BOK as well…
As said before here.. Norway has two written languages and they are “Bokmål” and “Nynorsk”. Bokmål is close to the danish language that were used among most important public people when we were in a union with Denmark( untill 1814). Nynorsk is based on a huge variety of dialects found in the Norwegian fiords and mountains and were made as a written language in the 1840-50’s
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?
What about the Basques?
I can’t find Basque…
The Basques always thinking they are the center of the world…
Pilar your comment is so valuable … so you refuse to give an explanation. You better shut up instead of saying NOTHING
Having been corrected about Basque in a comment above, do you now prefer to give useless and stupid answers? Just for asking where Basque is the Basques think they’re the center of the world, do they? I guess you just have something against basques. Not being one of them, I also was wondering where their language is. Probably simply forgotten, even though there are more Basque speakers than speakers of a couple of the languages shown in the picture.
Yes, “Andrew Constable” sounds like a typical Basque name…
Basque is not Indo-European (nor are the finno-ugric languages, don’t ask me why they’re there and Basque is not).
what does FRI mean?
Frisian
Frisian
I think FRISIAN
Frisian: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisian_languages
Frisian
Frisian..
That’s Frisian, an old North Holland (Friesland) language, very similar to English
do you know where is Friseland???? Search it in front of shors of Nederlands! yes, that is the nice row of islands. 😛
Frisian
It probably stands for Frisian languages (spoken in parts of the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark).
Reblogged this on My Twirly Blog and commented:
Language twirls and clusters. Constellations of words like stars.
where is hungary , węgry?
Top right corner, “HUN”.
Towards the top of the diagram on the right.
Which language is “SRD” ? The one close to Italian in this chart
Sardinian (I guess)
Sardinian.
I suppose, SRD is meant to be Sardinian.
Sardinian
Sardinian
Sardinian
Sardo (Sardinian)
sardinian
Sardinian
Est sa limba Sarda – (è la lingua Sarda)
I can’t see bask language in the diagram…
Basque is not related to these Indo-European languages, and that’s why.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basque_language
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.
Neiter are Hungarian, Estonian and Finnish and they are on the map. That is the reason
75 percent of the bask vocabulary are loan words, mainly from latin and romance languages. For ex: mendi comes from latin (montes) bake also (pace)
Slavs are not human beings.
Really? Why not?
You sound like being a nazi!
..and you are a nazi being
I absolutely agree! Slavs are like gods in human presence, not a human beings 🙂
I can’t find Maltese here (maybe I am dumb), can you help?
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
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.
…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.
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.
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.
Bosnian language is missing between Croatian and Serbian
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.
So, apparently Turkish is not an European language?!
Like Finno-Ugric, Turkish is not Indo-European. That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be listed, though.
But some, not all, Finno-Ugrian languages spoken In Europe is listed. Turkish is not. Nor is Romani listed. Why?
It isn’t.
Where is Latin? The positioning of certain linguas is missleading…Real life is 3 dimentional…
We’re talking about living languages.
and basque?
Missing Basque
Yes, the original research data for the chart comes from K. Tyshchenko (1999), Metatheory of Linguistics, but this book was published in _UKRAINIAN_.
I’m missing Basque
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.
That’s like saying we should include Arabic or Chinese. Come on…
We kinda could include Arabic disguised as Maltese, I suppose.
And Basque (Euskera) must be on another planet, right?
Big mistake. Euskera must be in the middle, without connections with others languages because nobody knows its origin.
It should be really far from the other languages. Likely slightly closer to the Kartvelian and\or Finno-Ugric than the Indo-European ones.
what “srd” stands for?
Sardinian.
the language of Sardigna
Sardinian (Sardo)
Sardinian.
sardinian
srd sardinian
What about Basque (a non-European language of Europe)?
You mean non-IndoEuropean. Basque is certainly European.
Sr – circle refers to Silesian?
Sr probably refers to Sorbian, an isolated Slavic language spoken in Germany.
rather sorb
I think Sr = Serbian
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorbian_languages
Sr >>> Serbian
No, it’s Sorbian.
no, that’s Sorbian (Upper and Lower)….
No, it’s Serbian: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbian_language
I think it refers to Sorbian languages (in Polish, języki łużyckie)
Sr= Sorbian
Sorbian (Serbołużyczanski)
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)
I guess Sr is for Serbia, which makes Pol-Sr a strange connection.
It should refer to the Sorbian languages.
Sorabian I think
It’s probably Sorbian.
I think “Sr” refers to Sorbs – Sorbian
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)
I suppose it’s Sorbian, a Slavic language spoken in Germany (łużycki in Polish).
It is Sorbian (serbšćina).
Sorbs
It must be Sorbian.
Sorbian (serbołużycki) ?
Sorbian, a Slavic language in former Eastern Germany
Sr refers to Sorbian, a Slavic language spoken in eastern Germany (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorbian_languages)
probably SORBIAN
suppose it is Sorbian (Slavic group in Germany)
It probably refers to Sorbian.
Sr stands for Lower and Upper Sorbian in eastern Germany.
Sorbian most likely (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorbian_languages)
no, it’s serbian
I mean Lusatian Serbs 😉
Sorbian obviously.
I’d rather say it’s Sorbian, Silesian is only a dialect.
No, I think Sorb http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorbs
Sorbian
Indeed… dates back to Charlemagne’s times when abbot Einhard describes his efforts of making peace with Slavic tribes against Saxons in Silesia…
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..
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?
Arturo, I suspect it is due to the influence of Church Slavonic on Russian and Serbian. That easily explains the proximity of Russian to Bulgarian, which is the source for Church Slavonic.
Sorbian (Slavic in Germany)
No. it’s Sorbian, spoken in Germany by the Slavic minority group. Their largest concentration is around Dresden.
I guess, it refers to Sorbian.
Probably sorbs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorbs).
No, to Sorbian (język łużycki, a właściwie dwa – górnołużycki i – bliższy polskiemu – dolnołużycki; obydwa na wymarciu, niestety…).
Racja.
Sorbian (?)
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.
no, I suppose it’s Sorbian (Łużycki)
I think it’s Sorbian (Lužická Srpčina)
it’s Serbian
Sorbian maybe?
It refers to Sorbian (serbsko-łużycki)
Rather to Serbian
SRB = Serbian?
I think, it is Wendish (Sorbians in Lusatia).
It refers to Sorabian (around Bautzen).
No, sorbian (upper and lower)
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.
Most likely SR is for Sorbian
I’d say that it’s Sorbian, due to close relation with Polish and Czech.
Sorbian is the only thing that fits and is still spoken
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorbian_languages
rather Sorbian
Silesian is not a language but dialect
I suppose not – Silesian would have some kind of connection with German 🙂
Silesian is part of Polish language according to linguists.
those are Sorbian languages (Języki łużyckie)
Sorbian
Sr refers to Sorbian (po polsku serbołużycki).
No, Serbian
I am kidding 🙂 I am also curious. What means “Sr”?
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
nope, Sorbian (Serbsko-łużycki
mysle ze chodzi tu o http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorbian_languages
No, it’s Sorbian.
No, It is Sorbian from Czech-Polish-German border. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorbian_languages
😮 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
Probably the man lives in Warsaw or other region far from the Silesia region :p
Sorbic
If I was to guess, I’d say Sorbian rather… Unfortunately 😛
Serbian, I’d say. Silesian is a dialect, not a language.
No, to Sorbian.
It refers to Sorbian (pl. łużycki)
It must be Sorbian, no?
Sorbian, I should imagine.
No, Sr is Sorbian (Sorbisch) spoken in the Eastern part of Germany. It’s really two different languages – Upper and Lower Sorbian.
I’d rather say to the Sorbian Languages
probably sorbic!
Silesian’s a dialect, not a language.
Sr is probably Sorbian.
No, Sr means Sorbs (Serbo Łużyczanie).
Upper Sorbian / Lower Sorbian
I think it probably refers to Sorbian, but it seems to me as though Silesian’s position on the graph would be pretty similar.
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.
Sorbian, I think.
I think it’s Sorbian (the language spoken by Sorbs in south-east Germany)
Sorbian, spoken in Germany at the Polish, Czech borders.
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)
Probably Serbian
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.
Sorbian would be my guess.
I suspect it’s Sorbian.
Probably Sorbian
Sorbian, I guess
Serbian?
Serbian i believe
Sr to Serbołużyczanie raczej
It’s Serbian.
Where’s Basque?
I think because they can’t really place it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basque_language
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.
Thats what I asked myself, too!
Somewhere out of the map, playing the language isolate game.
very far away from everything we know 🙂
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.
Bai! (means “yes” in Basque) How would Basque connect with these other languages?
exactly.
Basque is probably disconnected from this graph. see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basque_language
Basque is not Indo-European, man, it’s an isolate.
And… Maybe it’s not considered to be a “major language of europe” 😉
I was wondering that myself…
Basque isn’t part of the Indo-European family.
It should be in a circle that’s not connected to any of the others at all!
On it’s own little linguistic island, driving everyone around them mad!
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.
Basque is a language isolate, so it wouldn’t be included in an Indo-European language chart.
Basque is not a indoeuropean language, basque is an isolated language which has no real connections to other languages.
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).
Good question. Basque is not an indo-european language, but neither are Hungarian and Estonian, however shown on the map.
This is either a very good question or a subtle ironic joke. Nice work!
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.
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.
in your ass
Basque is unrelated to anything except may distantly to Etruscan.
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
As we know Albanian language from Ilirian and pelasgic language is older than any language in the Europe, you can see on the fig albanian language is not related with no other language.
Basque has no relation to any other language. Which is significant.
should be a medium sized blob, probably hidden by the key below Spanish 🙂
O Basco e o Lapão não são linguas indo-européias,
Agreed. Basque is clearly a European language. Hungarian, Estonian, and Finnish originated in Asia, so they’re less European than Basque.
You realise that the “Indo” in “Indo-European” relates to India, right? It’s quite possible that the original speakers of PIE were Asian by the standard of “where they live”. Not to mention that PFU is postulated to have been spoken between the Baltic and the Urals, which means they didn’t originate in Asia.
John, you probably do not know where Europe or Asia are.
Basque is not an indo-european langage. The fact that this langage is still alive is amazing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basque_language
Basque is a language isolate. It’s “mother” language has died out leaving it alone. It is considered “celto-iberic”
Sorry but it is not true. Basque is not related on any way to celtic languages or to the ancient Celtiberic language.
Basque doesn’t belong to any linguistic family, and it doesn’t have any relationship with european languages.. It is a “mysterious” language.
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.
Basque is an isolate, with no known cognates.
Basque isn’t related to the others at all. It’s a language isolate.
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.
You count hundreds languages that this so-called scholar has forgotten.
Beacuse the origin of basque language or euskara is still unknown. It does not belong to any known language family.
So is Greek and Albanian , they are not related to any other language.
Sorry Aleks, you’re wrong. Both Albanian and Greek are Indo-European.
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.
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).
El Vasco es una lengua aislada, aparentemente sin relación genética con ninguna de Europa.
yes, where is it?
i just wondered about the Basque Country. Euskera it supposed not to the linked to any other language.
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.
10 cm left from your screen 😉
Basque is an language isolate, so (I believe) it shares no connection with any other living language.
Floating around somewhere in space, totally unrelated to anything ever.
Basque is not an Indo-European language. Hindi shares more with these languages than Basque. Interesting isn’t it.
Norther Spain.
Basque is not a language… it’s just a spanish dialect
No it’s not.
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.
Basque isn’t connected to any of the other languages, so it drifted away off the chart.
Basque doesn t belongs to Indo-European languages family.
Poor Basque doesn’t belong to anything..
Basque is one of the Finno-Ugric languages, unrelated to Spanish, despite the location of its speakers, except for current borrowings from it.
Basque is a language isolate, it’s not a Finno-Ugric language. It has several postulated links with various languages or language families, but it’s not conclusively linked with any of them.
Basque is a pre-indoeuropean language and has nothing to do with the rest. But so is Finno-Ugric…
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.
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.
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…
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.
Jeff S: of course there are Basque Mountains; I’ve seen them myself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basque_Mountains
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.
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?)
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.
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.
just learn latin if you want to understand romance languages. plus because its a dead language it should be eaisier to learn
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.
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.
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.
Only if you don’t count the millions of South Americans, who also speak Spanish.
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)
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
Ha ha ha…. Not. I would be amazed if you speak other language than english. Dumbass!!
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)
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.
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
OBVIOUSLY. it’s the direct derivation of latin.
Or Catalan.
F**k off and die
PS: it is a joke jejejeje
PS2: no!!!! xD
Besa mi culo, hijo de puta
Is there a legend for this? I’m having trouble with BOK and SRD.
BOK – most probably Bokmål; SRD => SRO – Sardinian?
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.
Sardinian?
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.
Il Sardo è una lingua neolatina molto diversa dall’italiano
I believe BOK is Norwegian Bokmal and SRD is Sardinian.
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.
I’m assuming BOK is Bokmal and NN is Nynorsk; two different ways of writing Norwegian.
SRD could be Sardinian perhaps?
SRD could be Sardininan I assume
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.
I think ‘Bok’ means bokmal, ‘Srd’ means sardinian for sure.
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.
SRD might be Sardinian, BOK Norwegian Bokmal.
A legend would be good. And indeed, how about Basque?
I think they mean this:
BOK = Bokmål http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokmal
SRD = Sardinian http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sardinian_language
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 🙂
SRD, I am guessing, is Sardinian
BOK is Bokmål (Norwegian)
BOK must be the Norwegian Bokmål. SRD is probably Sardinian – I am guessing based on the similarity to Italian.
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
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.
Bok is probably bokmål which is one of two languages in norway, nn is the other..
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.
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.
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.
BOK = Bokmal , a dialect of Norwegian. SRD = i assume is Sardinian.
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.
I would imagine SRD is for Sardinian.
“Bok” is Norwegian Bokmål (NN is Norwegian Nynorsk), and “Srd” is Sardinian.
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.
BOK is Bokmal Norwegian (old Norwegian) and SRD is Sardinian =)
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.
SRD is Sardinian, it’s not a dialect but an independent language. BOK no clue… 🙂
BOK = Norwegian I think (Bokmal). SRD=Sardinian?
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
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.
Laura, I´m from sweden but i´d say that
BOK = BOKmål
NN = NyNorsk
ie both are norwegian
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.
guessing it’s Bokmal ( in Norway) and Sardinian
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)
BOK is Norwegian (Bokmal) and NN is Norwegian as well, (Nynorsk).
SRD is Sardinian, most likely.
As i understand:
BOK – is a bokmal, one of the 2 Norwegian languages, another one is Nunorsk (NN sign on the scheme)
SRD – Sardinian
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
BOK refers to Norwegian Bokmål. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokmål
Srd is probably Sardinian
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.
Bok= Bokmal, written Norwegian.
Srd= Sardinian, an offshoot of Italian.
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.
SRD Sardinia, sardo is a language, as romano of Rome
.
Bok would be Bokmal (Norway) and Srd Sardinian, but I’m stuck on Rm.
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.
By size and close link to Italian it actually looks more like Sicilian – but that would presumably be SCN, which I don’t see.
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.
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.
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.
SRD is Sardinian and Bok is Bokmal, the dominant Norwegian dialect (the NN is New Norwegian, the other major dialect)
BOK is Bokmål (the main formal version of Norwegian, with the other being Nynorsk, NN in the chart); SRD would be Sardinian.
SRD : how about Sardinian ?
BOK = ??
BOK is Original Norwegian “Bokmål” where as NN is “Nynorsk” (New Norwegian).
Bokmål is spoken in Norway. SRD can be Sardinian.
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.
Bokmal (Norwegian written) and Sardinian, I believe.
I guess BOK stands for Bokmål and SRD for Sardinian.
is SRD related to Sardinia? I think so…
My guess is:
SRD = Sardinian
BOK = bokmal (classic Norwegian)
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.
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.
I don’t know about BOK but SRD is probably Sardinian
BOK is probably Norwegian Bokmal, SRD – maybe Sardinia?
BOK is probably Bokmal (Norwegian) and SRD, just guessing based on position Sardinian.
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)
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.
They are all ISO 639 standard codes. You can search for them here : http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/php/langcodes-search.php
Except BOK and SRD, you’re right 🙁
Presumably Bokmål (with NN=Nynorsk) and Sardinian.
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
Bokmal literary norwegian… SRB serbian?
SRD next to italian… sardinian perhaps?
Sardinia and Bornholm
I’m pretty sure BOK stands for Bokmal, a variant of Norwegian. SRD is probably Sardinian
SRD is surely Sardinian, but I have no idea for BOK.
BOK is bokmal and NN is nynorsk, they are variants of Norwegian
Srd is Sardinian probably
I guess BOK is Bokmål which is the most common version of norwegian (along with NN= New Norwegian).
SRD=Sardinian?? I heard it´s close to Italian and Catalan, so it must be that.
Bok must be Bokmål (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokm%C3%A5l). Srd must be Sardinian (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sardinian_language).
Bokmal and Sard, I should think. Bokmal is one variety of Norwegian, and Nynorsk is another.
bokmal, one standard of norwegian language
Bokmål (Norwegian standard) and Sardinian
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.”
“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.
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).
My guess is that SRD is Sardu (from Sardinia) and BOK is Bokmål (one of two standards for Norwegian, the other being Nynorsk (NN))
SRD must be Sard – Sardinia
Bok means bokmål
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokm%C3%A5l
I’m guessing BOK is Bokmal, a traditional form of Norwegian, whereas NN is Nynorsk, a newer form.
Bokmol (Norwegian, older than NN-Nynorsk) and sardynian I believe.
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!
BOK and NN are two different types of Norwegian. Not sure about SRD but possibly refers to Sardinian dialect.
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.
and SRD is probably Sardinian.
BOK is Norwegian Bokmål (as opposed to NN, or Norwegian Nynorsk) and not sure about SRD…Sardinian, maybe?
BOK = Norwegian-Bokmal
SRD = Sardinian
BOK is bokmål (norwegian), and SRD is sardinian. A legend would be nice, though.
Sardinian & Bokmål, I assume
SRD I think Sard (Sardinia)
I’d say SRD is Sardinian
BOK = Norwegian Bokmal, SRD = Sardinian
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.
Srd = Sardininan; BOK = Bjork???
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.
SRD is Sardinian, spoken in Sardinia!
I’m assuming BOK is Bokmål, which is Norwegian. NN is new Norwegian. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokmal
BOK = Bokmål, SRD probably Sardinian
BOK: Bokmål (dialect of Norwegian)
SRD: Sardinian
It stands for Bokmål (Traditional Norwegian) and Sardinian
bökmal; sardenian
Sardinia? No idea on BOK though!
bok=bokmal=language spoken in Norway
SRD=probably sardinian dialect
sardinian and bokmal
BOK = Bokmal, which is basically East-Norwegian and pretty much equal to Danish
SRD = Sardinian
SRD – sardinian
I think SRD must be sardinian. BOK is norvegian (Bokmål). NN is Nynorsk, another norwegian variety.
BOK = Norwegian Bokmål
SRD = Sardinian?
BOK = Bokmål, Norwegian. SRD dunno
BOK(Bokmål) and NN(Nynorsk) are the two variations of norweigan. Srd might be “sardu”, spoken on Sardinia.
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
Would it possible SRD = Sardinian?
BOK = norwegian bokmaal (while NN is nynorsk, “the other norwegian”),
SRD = sardinian
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.
And I guess SRD represents Sardinian
SRD must be Sardinian and BOK Bokmål.
I would imagine that BOK is Norwegian Bokmål (with NN being Ny-Norsk, the other official dialect of Norwegian) and SRD is Sardinian.
I guess SRD stands for Sardinian, spoken in the homonymous Italian island.
SRD – Sardinian language. BOK – maybe Norwegian Bokmål ??
And BOK for Norwegian Bokmål.
This list can help: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISO_639-1_codes
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.
SRD is sardinian, the language spoken in Sardinia.
Bokmal and Sardinian
BOK is for Bokmål, NN is for Nynorsk, which are the two main languages in Norway.
SRD must be Sardinian, I guess
I assume from the closeness to Italian that SRD is Sardinian. BOK must be Bokmal, or written Norwegian.
Bokmal (Norwegian) and Sardinian, most likely
BOK is Norwegian Bokmal, and I’m not certain as to what SRD is. 🙂
BOK propably norwegian bokmal, SRD sardic (the bigger island west of italy)?
SRD should be Sardinian language, I think.
Bokmål (written Norwegian) and Sardu (Sardinian)
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)
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.
I’m guessing BOK is bokmål (and NN in not norwegian, but nynorsk). Can’t help you with SRD.
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.
SRD is for Sardinian
and BOK stands for Bokmål – one of the official standards for Norwegian, while NN stands for Nynorsk – another official standard for Norwegian
BOK – try to translate this word from Turkish. It`s very funny, I assure you.
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.
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)
Bokmal (Written norwegian) & Sardinian.
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.
I assume BOK is Bokmål and SRD is Sardinian.
I think these are Bokmål and Sardinian but not sure of Sr. Any thoughts?
BOK is Norwegian bokmål, I believe
BOK refers to Bokmål, one variety of Norwegian.
There are two official versions of Norwegian, bokmål (“book tongue”, most common) and nynorsk (“new Norwegian”). BOK is bokmål.
SRD is probably Sardinian.
I’m guessing they’re Norsk Bokmål (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokm%C3%A5l) and Sardinian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sardinian_language).
I imagine they would be Bokmal and Sardinian.
Bokmål and Sardinian
Norwegian Bokmal and Sardinian
I believe BOK is Bokmål and SRD is Sardinian.
BOK is probably Bokmål (Norwegian) and SRD Sardinian.
http://www.ethnologue.com/browse/codes/s
I would guess that those are Bokmal (a form of Norwegian) and Sardinian.
Bokmal – norwegian, Sardinian, Sorbian (Sr) maybe?
but I’m not the author..
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.
SRD should be Sardenian… BOK I have no idea…
Here is BOK!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokm%C3%A5l
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7 January 2014 at 3:32 am
BOK – bokmål – danish-norwegian, or norwegian-danish 🙂
SRD – sardinian
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.
My guess: SRD – Sardinian; BOK – Norwegian (bokmål); NN – Norwegian (Nynorsk)
Sardinian? Can’t help you with BOK tho :-p Probably another Scandinavian Island colony, as Faroese is there seperate to Norwegian….
oh the irony, misspelling “separate” in a language discussion
BOK seems to be Boksmal (IIRC), a version of Norwegian, and SRD is Sardic.
I think SRD could be Sardo, the languaje from Sardegna.
I think SRD is sardinia
SRD is Sardo.
Bok should be Bokmal, the most common form of written language in Norway, and Srd should be the sardinian language…
I think BOK stands for Bokmål, but yeah I agree there should be a legend for this :[
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.
BOK, Norwegian bokmål
SRD, Sardo, Sardinian?
BOK is Norwegian Bokmål. SRD I believe is Sardinian spoken on the island Sardinia.
SRD is sardinian, BOK I haven’t figured.
I’d guess Bokmål (standard written Norwegian) and Sardinian.
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.
BOK=Bokmål (standard Norwegian). I don’t know what SRD is.
Wait, Sardinian?
Bokmal and Sardinian
Bokmål (as opposed to Nynorsk = NN) and Sardinian.
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
My guess is that BOK is one of the Norwegian dialects, Bokmål and that SRD is Sardinian.
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’).
For BOK, have a look at the varieties of Norwegian. For SRD, have a look at what islands are around Italy.
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.
Sorry, SRD is Sardinian version (i think) 🙂
SRD = Sardinian language
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.
BOK is Bokmål, one of the two official langauges in Norway. SRD, as I presume, is Sardinian.
Cheers
BOK is Norwegian Bokmål http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokm%C3%A5l
NN is Norwegian Nynorsk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nynorsk
BOK must be Norwegian Bokmål and SRD – Sardinian…
norwegian bokmal
sardinian
BOK stands for Bokmål (the official written Norwegian language), while SRD stands for Sardinian!
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.
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.
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.
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.)
Same for me… De même pour moi…
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.
Bokmål ( norwegian) and sardinian I guess 🙂
BOK = bokmal, older Norwegian, as opposed to NN, nynorsk, I think.
Still would like to see a legend too.
My guess: Bokmaal (Norwegian has two varieties, nynorsk, likely NN and bokmaal) and Sardinian?
Bokmål in Norway and Sardinian in Sardinia.
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 🙂
I think it’s Boksmal – one of the official languages of Norway.
Sorry, Bokmål, the official written Norwegian.
Sorry, Bokmål, the official written Norwegian.
My guess would be Bokmål and Sardinian.
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.
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.
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
BOK is Norwegian (Bokmål as opposed to NN which is Nynorsk) Sorry but I don’t know SRD.
Bok = Bokmal, (sorry I don’t have the “a” with the little circle on it), one form of Norwegian.
Srd = Sardinian
BOK is Bokmål (Norwegian)
SRD I think must be Rhetoroman
They’re Bokmål and Sardinian. Sardinian is the language most similar to latin.
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).
I believe BOK is Norwegian (Bokmal) and SRD Sardinian.
BOK = Bokmal; NN=Nynorsk – both are two norwegian dialects (there is no “standard” Norwegian)
SRD = Sardinian
BOK=bokmal, Norwegian
SRD=sardinian
BOK and NN are two dialects of Norwegian: Bokmål (literally “book-language”) and Nynorsk (New Norwegian).
SRD: maybe Sardinian?
my guess: bok = bokmal (nn = nynorsk), srd= sardinian
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.
Bok refers to Bokmål, an official written standard for the Norwegian language, alongside Nynorsk.
Very nice, thanks!
SRD Sardinia, sardo is a language, as romano of Rome
.
excuse me! answer is not for you!
sardinian and bokmal
BOK – bokmål – danish-norwegian, or norwegian-danish 🙂
SRD – sardinian
sorry, it’s not for you
SRB = Serbian? BOK = something Northern Germany?
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.
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.
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.
No Occitan? I figured it would be joined with Catalan.
BOK = bokmaal = Norwegian
NN = nynorsk = Norwegian
both are recognized official languages in Norway.
SRD = Sardinian
Are you sure that the grammatical simplification from old Germanic is really “pidginization”?
I knew it.
Hungarians really ARE aliens!
@Laura
I guess it’s Bokmål (Norwegian) and the Sardinian language.
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.
By the way: a version with ISO 639-3 codes would be nice.
Sr – could be Sorbian?
Bok – that’s Bokmål, the traditional version of Norwagian (as compared to Nynorsk – NN).
Srd – could that be Sardinian?
SRD is Sardinian
Seem to be missing Turkish on there. It is a fairly major language in Europe.
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
Luxembourg is missing 🙁 stupid graph
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.
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.
That is propaganda. There is Macedonian language which is Slavic language different from Serbian or Bulgarian. Graph is missing direct link between Macedonian and Serbian.
I would guess “BOK” stands for “bokmål”, which is the name of one of the 2 types of Norwegian. “SRD” – Sardinian?
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 !
@Laura:
Bokmål and Sardinian 🙂
Laura, BOK must mean “bokmål” whereas “NN” stands for “nynorsk”. SRD, I suppose stands for Sardinian.
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)
BOK is Norwegian Bokmal, and SRD, I assume, is Sardinian.
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.
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.
SRD stands for Sardinia and BOK stands for Bokmål Norwegian
Polish, unlike many Slavik languages, has an incredible number of Latin words which is not reflected in the graph at all
SRD is Sardinian (and Sardinia is my land). I think its more near to spanish and catalan then Italian. (sorry for my terrible english)
Basque??????
BOK is Bokmal Norwegian; DSH is Danish.
BOK is probably Bokmal, one of the two versions of Norwegian. SRD is probably Sardinian.
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
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.
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!
BOK is Bokmål, or standard Norwegian. It think
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…
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.
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.
That is not true. I am Macedonian and I remember how my Great parents talk. They were born at the beginning of XX Century and they didn’t talk bulgarian or serbian. However, Bulgarian (and Greek) propaganda on Macedonian language is legendary. BTW, do you know that Serbian nationalist also don’t recognise Macedonian language, they call it “South Serbian”
Many linguists have attested to the existence of a separate Macedonian language. Bulgarian is similar when written but the spoken language is like day and night from Macedonian.
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!!!
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.
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)
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.
@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.
@Laura: Bokmal (Norwegian) and Sardinian, I suppose.
BOK= bokmål (norwegian system of writing, spelling, semi-dialect) as opposed to nynorsk. SRD could well be Sardinian.
Also, Sami is missing.
FRI = Frisian,
BOK= Bokmal (one of two Norwegian languages, closer to Danish) and
NN = New Norwegian (the other one).
What about basque?????? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basque_language
SRD is the language spoken in Sardinia, I think.
For two blog posts, borrowed research, and a needlessly hostile “about” section, this blog is getting some decent traffic. Good work.
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 😀
Sardinian and Bokmal (Norway).
Reblogged this on Kiss the Translator and commented:
Manca l’euskera…
@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
Is not Neo Norwegian (NN) more closely related to Dansih(DSH) than Norwegian Bokmaal(BOK)?
Sr is probably Sorbian
BOK is Bokmål – standard written Norwegian
SRD must be Sardinian
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…).
@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.
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).
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.
I don’t think it is correct either.
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.).
Ah, I see that Finno-Ugric Hungarian out on the wing !
Bok = Norsk bokmål
Srd = sardininan
But yeah, I had to google some of the languages too.
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.
Reblogged this on ::Keep in Dutch::.
greek is foreveralone
Euskera?
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)
SRD may be Sardinian. BOK is ‘bokmål’, that is, standard Norwegian
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.
They always make a mess with Slovenia and Slovakia … too similar name, too similar flag 😉
It’s not published in Russian, but in Ukrainian.
Sr: Sorbian, Bok: Bokmal, Srd: Sardinian(?)
Albanian connected to Slavic (Slovene)? Couldn’t be more off.
@ Laura Blumenthal BOK is Bokmål, one of the standard variants of Norwegian, and SRD is Sardinian.
BOK=bokmaal and SRD stands for Sardinian, i believe
My guesses:
Sr – Sorbian (spoken in Lusatia)
BOK – Norwegian Bokmål (as opposed to NN – Norwegian Nynorsk)
SRD – Sardinian
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 :-).
They always make a mess with Slovenia and Slovakia … too similar name, too similar flag 😉
@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
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.
Nice. Show me the proof for the “only 10 %”. This is a strange viewpoint. How can you imagine a language with 90% “exchanged/loanword” to be so different from all other surrounding languages?
In any case the idea of the graph is good, but to measure language distances you may not find appropriate measurable values… and will lead (and already lead) to debates. 🙂
Laura, I think BOK refers to Bokmål and SRD to Sardinian.
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.
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.
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 …
Sorry, I’m replying so late. Never got a notification about your reply to my mailbox (hope you will get one now!). Accidentally, saw your comment when a friend linked me the article. So, I guess all languages are somehow connected, that is have some sort of lexical distance. I just meant to say their connection should be “more wide apart”, that’s all. But I don’t know how to use the fancy linguistic words to say that.
“Sr” is Sorbian.
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
“Srd” is Sardinian and “Bok” is Norwegian Bokmal.
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…
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.
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)
Because Albanian language is the oldest language in the Europe.
Reblogged this on london is my modern babylon. and commented:
just to prove my point to everyone again – estonia is NOTHING like russian!
My guess is: Sr = Sorbic
“BOK” certainly is Norwegian “Bokmål”
SRD presumably Sardinian
its bokmal (norwegian) and sardenian
it was published IN UKRAINIAN.
Where the hell is Turkish?
there is no Macedonian as there is no Bosnian and Montenegrian!!!
SRD – Sardinian
BOK – Standard Norwegian
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?
SRD is likely Sardinian. I can’t figure out BOK. Anyone got an insight?
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.).
BOK = probably Bokmal and SRD Sardinian
There is a mistake in the size of the Slovak and Slovenian language speakers
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.
Sorry, “there are only 2 mil…”
They always make a mess with Slovenia and Slovakia … too similar name, too similar flag, nothing new 😉
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.
Where is the Basque language?
Basque is not an Indo-European language.
I have some doubts about Albanian so close to Slovenian (!?) and closer to Romanian than from Italian (not to mention Turkish)
The Albanian language is an Indo-European language in a branch by itself, sharing its branch with no other extant language.
Romanian shares HUGE active vocabulary with Albanians thorugh thracians. Romanian was highly influenced by Latin, not by Italian EVEN IF they are very similar.
I know it says ‘major’ languages of Europe, but Manx and Cornish could also be in there with the other Celtic languages
Why, are the major ones?…
SRD = Sardinian
BOK = Bokmal (classic Norwegian)
I would assume that
NN = Nynorsk
BOK = Bokmål
Fascinating! Clearly illustrates my experience with Hungarian!
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.
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?
@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…
Bok – bokmal? Srd – Sardinian?
Any comments on Albanian – Slovenian (?) connection? That seems *very* odd.
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.
What about kashubian language?
I believe Sr is Sorbian. SRD-Sardinian? No idea what BOk is.
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!
Where is Basque?
SRD is Sardinian 🙂
@ 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!
Bok = Bokmål (Norwegian) ; NN = Nynorsk (Norwegian) But I’m having troule with Fri.
…SRD has to be Sardinian…?
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
To Piotrek:
SR refers to Sorbian
To Laura Blumenthal:
BOK refers to Norwegian Bokmål – SRD refers to Sardinian
…Ah, Fri must be Frisian.
@Chris – At a guess, BOK is probably Bokmål and SRD Sardinian.
Bok = Bokmål. SRD = Sardinian. I think Sr = Sorbian.
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?
Albanian,the language of gods
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.
This is wrong…
It would be nice to see the Turkish language
I believe BOK refers to bokmal, or book tongue, the written language of Norway, as opposed to NN or Nynorsk
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.
NN and BOK are presumably Nynorsk and Bokmål, respectively.
BOK = bokmaal, a version of Norwegian. SRD is probably Sardinian
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?
” 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
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)
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.
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.
BOK=Bokmål=Norewegian (NN=Nynorsk), SRD=Sardinian
I find it very interesting! Where is Turkish language? I think that also belongs to the Finno-Ugric arow!
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!)
I suspect NN and BOK are the two variants of Norwegian (Nynorsk and Bokmål) but I’m at a loss with SRD…
Sardinian maybe?
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)…
Is Basque just off-chart for difference?
Laura, SRD must be Sardinian, I can’t figure out what BOK is…
BOK = Bokmål Norwegian; SRD = Sardinian.
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.
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
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
I’d be interested to see Yiddish and Hebrew represented
SRD should be Sardinian (and Corse) isn’t it? And Basque must be quite outdoor, here.
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.
Basque isn’t in because it’s not considered part of any linguistic group, due to its origins.
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.
@Laura
BOK is Bokmål (one version of Norwegian) and SRD is Sardinian language (spoken on the Isle Sardinia)
SRD is Sardinia, but I also don’t know what BOK is except that it is probably a Belgian area dialect….
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?
They always make a mess with Slovenia and Slovakia … too similar name, too similar flag, nothing new 😉
I’m guessing that Sr is Sorbian and Norwegian is split up into Nynorsk (NN) and Bokmal (Bok).
And where are other language? For example from Slavic group: Moravian, Silesian, Kashubian, Ruthenian, Resian, Polesian, Siberian, Lachian, Polabian, Lower Serbian (Lower Lusatian)?
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.
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?
@Laur Blementhal Bokmal and Sardinian
It is little bit bullshit. Where is the connection between Czech and Slovak language with German?
And the connection of Slovak language with Swedish? (have the same grammar)
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.
I’m guessing BOK = Bokmål (Norwegian) and SRD = Sardinian? And I agree, there should have been a legend with the map.
where is basque??????
Piotrek, no, I suppose it’s Sorbian (Łużycki)
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.
Would you mind adding Bosnian language to the Slavic group of languages? Thank you very much.
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).
Teresa Elms, you should read this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basque_language
Nice, but there’s room for quibbling. For instance, on this graph Albanian is as close to Slovenian as English is to Dutch. WTF?
I’m from Slovenia and I’ll probably never understand that either.
Where’s Armenian,also ^_^ ? (though looks nice)…
And where is the ARMENIAN language?
BOK is a form of Norwegian (‘Bokmal’). NN is the other form (‘Ny Norsk’). SRD, I think is Sardinian.
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!
!!!there must be a link …!
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.
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
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).
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?
English did not ADD French grammar : hopefully, the french grammar being particularly weird, even from latin origin.
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.
What about Sami languages? Some other small languages are missing too.
BOK is Bokmål (one of two written standards for Norwegian, the other being Nynorsk [NN]). I would guess SRD is Sardinian.
Bok = Norsk(Bokmal) Srd= Sardinia (Italian isle)
What have ALBANIAN with Slavic Language? We have more with Romance, Latin!
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)
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.
Hey you betrayer
Why do you still take the same dance will yet continues your dance ?
Us Albanian know who are those who are make manipulating in centuries, and they manipulation are make by monks in monasteries.
You modern Greeks think that do us Albanians not know who are you Greek? but we know all
You Greeks should not open more hole of your mouth, you close what the hell hole of your mouth. The you talk more that the more you damage yourself,
Close your mouth, you wind shit comes up in interrnet, you mouth is full of shit.
Is better for you, close your mouth if you want a little more you greece live long.
We know exat who was ancient history , and Albanians know beter that are more accurate the today’s books?,, all 99.% of books are lies with the pseudos Greek myths. (ancient christian orthodox Greece) ——- (Holivood Greece)
those manipulations that were made in monasteries and later by the British and Bayern whole manipulations that were made in the whole time, we know all better that ancient history ,
You Greeks once were brothers with us, But brotherhood it was sometime in the 19th century
And what our former Brotherhood does not exist today? finitooo. Was once/
Goodbye Betrayer
That’s not representative. Catalan is much more similar to French than Spanish.
SRD = Sardinia ?
And what about Bosnian in Slavic group?
Greek : there is something mystical and powerful seeing my language stand alone on the center ! One of the most ancient languages still spoken !
http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/php/code_list.php
SRD stands for Sardagna / Bok could be the Bornholmsk: a mix of Danish-Swedish language talked in a small island, Bornholm.
Where’s Turkish, Azeri, Maltese, Armenian and Georgian?
no turkish?
BOK would be Norwegian Bokmal I assume, and SRD is probably Sardinian
Basque is a language isolate-not related or not demonstrated to be related to another language so it wouldn’t figure in this representation
Where are the other Finno-Ugric languages (Moksha, Mari, Komi and so on…)? They are printed, have newspapers, widely spoken and have even universities.
Thank you Tim, lonely but proudly to be Albanian.
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?
Sr is Sorbian – two Slavic minority languages spoken in Eastern Germany
Where’s Basque?
@Laura Blumenthal:
SRD – sardinian
BOK – bokmal
@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.
Albania the root
For Piotrek and Laura Blumenthal:
BOK – Bokmål (a variant of Norwegian)
SRD – Sardinian
SR – Sorbian
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).
Thank you cartographer1973 and everyone else who wrote the answers to my question.
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.
“but it did not ADD French grammar”
It did in my brain. Living in France for a few years will do that to you.
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…
How have you prepared this this chart? Is there a tool for it?
BOK should be bokmal (a Norwegian dialect), SRD is Sard, the native language of Sardegna.
Anyone know how to get the raw data for this chart? I would love to run different clustering and dimensionality reduction algorithms on it.
Laura B, I’m guessing bokmal (Norwegian) and Sardinian.
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.
Excellent. I’m concerned that Yiddish has been ignored on this chart. Yiddish and German are the two closest linguistic cousins within the Germanic family group. It’s easier for German speakers to understand spoken (not written) Yiddish than Dutch.
Bokmål , a standardised norvegian, and Sardu, as spoken in Sardinia
SRD probably stands for Sardinian. NN is Nynorsk Norwegian and BOK is Bokmål Norwegian.
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.
These names and plenty more…
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?
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.
I can’t find turkish…?
basque does not have ties to any of those languages and probably that is why it is not charted
What about Euskera (Basque), one of the oldest languages in Europe and one of the few that does´t come from indo-european languages?
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.
*written* by the majority of Norwegians… 🙂
Please add a legend, there are plenty of abbreviations I cannot interpret without one..
BOK – bokmal Norwegian
NN – Nynorsk (new norwegian)
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.
“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
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…
None of us (hungarian/romanian) have 100% sure and reliable facts about our history. Don’t forget that none of our recent history books are correct.
Don’t be angry at Steve, he has truth and believes mixed in his mind.
Gabriela: if you check the history, all nations (involving Romanians) killed millions of the other surrounding nations. This is a sad fact, but compared to the nations/countries still in war we should forgive finally and keep good neighborliness as it is a historical and geographical fact that we live side by side.
Sorry Steve, this is the usual pseudo-scientific nonsense some of my fellow Hungarians delude themselves into. The origins of the Hungarian language is pretty interesting in itself, no need to create delusional myths around it. I cannot convince you, I just say to you and your fellas: Go, educate yourself in linguistics and science in general.
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.
The Sami languages (some ten or so) should have been up there near Finnish somewhere. Three of them are official languages in Norway.
(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 🙂
Yeah… what about basque?
Catalan has 7 million speakers and it is quite bound to French and Portuguese, specially Portuguese… So catalan is quite wrong there
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
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
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
Would you mind adding Bosnian language to the Slavic group of languages next to Croatian and Serbian? Thank you very much.
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.
The Finno-Ugric language group was not originally a vertical island. Many Fenno-Ugric languages have disappeared from the map for historic reasons. Only some of them have survived. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finno-Ugric_peoples
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?
SRD is probably Sardinian. And BOK would be bokmal, one of the varieties of Norwegian.
“BOK” must be Bokmal, one of the two versions of Norwegian. And “SRD” – Sardinian?
(Just hypotheses)
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
Laura Blumenthal, I assume BOK is Norwegian Bokmål and SRD is Sardinian.
SRD – Sardinian
BOK – Bokmål (one of the official Norwegian languages) (NN – nynorsk/new Norwegian)
I’m guessing we’re “Germanic” due to the vast hordes of furrinners who were “Viking” around the area way back when.
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
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.
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…
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?
Laura: My guess is that BOK is Bokmål Norwegian and NN is Nynorsk Norwegian. Also guessing that SRD is Sardinian.
Bulgarian and Macedonian must be in the same circle. English and Scottish English are more different, than Bulgarian and Macedonian 😉
What they baptised as Macedonian is Slavic. The true Macedonians were speaking, speak and will keap speaking Greek.
Nope, you are wrong.
Strange that Polish would have greater lexical distance to German than to Lithuanian – doesn’t seem right
SRD is sardinian and I guess BOK is a kind of norwegian. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_639_macrolanguage
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.
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.
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.
I’m from Slovenia and I couldn’t agree with you more!
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.
I have trouble with the node “ROM” not being connected with the Slavic group.
Romania has been under Soviet/Russian influence for several centuries.
SRD stands for Sarda, language of Sardegna, I believe
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.
SRD – Sard (or Sardinian), some peopel regards it as a dialect of Italian, although seems is not.
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…
BOK would be Bokmål (spoken in Norway) I guess, and SRD Sardinian?
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!
Maybe Slovenian were the last Illyrian tribe that were sllavicized.
They always make a mess with Slovenia and Slovakia … too similar name, too similar flag, nothing new 😉
Sr = Sorbian
BOK = Bokmål (a form of Norwegian)
SRD = Sardinian
SRD might be Sardinian (which is a language not a an Italian dialect)
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.
I think SRD would be Sardinian about BOK no idea. Does anyone know “Pro”?
PRO stands for Provençal
SRD – Sardinian I would think
@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.
very good question! 😮
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.
What is pro? 🙁
BOK = Norwegian Bokmal… NN = New Norwegian… What’s FRI?
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!
There should definitely be a direct link between Italian and Greek, even displaying little or medium distance…!
Srd is probably Sardinian, older language than Italian.
Interesting!
Yep, a legend would be handy.
Also, knowing the official “major languages of Europe” chart, knowing where the considered languages start.
best regards
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.”
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.
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)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
@ 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.
Do you know which softwere was used to built the graphical representation?
What about the Sami languages? Seem to be all forgotten, just like the Basque.
SRD = Sardinian, guessing that SR = Sorbian, and BOK I have no idea…
Why would Slovenian be lexically closer to Albanian than any other Slavic language? This is very curious.
Maybe they were the last tribe that was Sllavicized.
I would guess that SRD = Sardinian and BOK = Bokmål (Norwegian).
Can we see the underlying data?
SRD = Sardinian language
Where are the asian languages? xD
Where are the asian and arabiclanguages? xD
I’m assuming SRD is Sardo, the language of Sardinia??
@Laura Blumenthal
I am assuming BOK= Bokmål –> NN= Nynorsk
and SRD = Sardinian
BOK is Bokmal (Norwegian) perhaps, while SRD is Sardinian I guess
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.)
BOK must be Norwegian Bokmål and SRD must be Sardinian. But what is PRO and Rm?
Sardinian is a (useful) language?
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 😮
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)
Arturo, “Belarusian” means “White Russian” on Belorussian language, so it cannot be offensive. In German for example the word for “Belorus” is “Weissrussland”. Or maybe you believe that Belorussians want to insult themselves?
Arturo Malvestito!!!
I’m sorry, but you are wrong!!!
I’m from Russia. Today my friend from Belarus told me one history, and he spoke belarussian – and me and my other friends understood EVERYTHING!!! And when I was in Belarus I was able understand what people said. I do not speak Belarusian. And I do not speak Ukranian. But I can understand those languages. Not all, but I understand.
But I can’t understand Serbian or Bulgarian!!
I think this Table is just a work of ONE person, and this is the personal opinion of the author.
All scientific work and all language practice say that Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian – is one linguistic subgroup of the group of Slavic languages. If You want, you just can ask WIKI.
p.s. And we know our history. And we know the etymology of the name Belarus, be sure!
And we’re not stupid, no matter how YOU want you to believe in it.
tá isso.
beijo no ombro
I noticed someone said “where is Basque on the chart”. Well, Basque is a “remnant” language and doesn’t really seem to fit anywhere
Sr = Sorbian (not the same as Serbian). I think. Srd = Sard(inian). Bok = (Norwegian) Bokmål. Apologies if not correct!
SRD refers to sardinian language. BOK, I don’t know.
BOK – Norwegian Bokmal
SRD – Sardinian, I guess?
Where is Latin? Arguably–German, English, French, Italian all get quite a bit of vocabulary from Latin!
In its freaking grave, I suppose.
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.
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.
If I had to guess, BOK and NN are dialects of Norwegian, Bokmal and NyNorsk
SRD is Sardo, language on Sardinia, Italian island. BOK is Bokmal, Danish language.
That’s Bokmål and Nynorsk … SRD must be Sardinian, Wikipedia estimates at ~1mil speakers in 2007.
Slavic Bosnia and Herzegovina
Albania unical
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.
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.
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 .
This comment reminds me a lot “My Big Fat Greek Wedding”.
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 !
SRD is Sardinian and BOK is Norwegian Bokmål.
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.
Would not be logical. This is obviously a chart with the languages CURRENTLY spoken throughout Europe, dude.
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 .
True, very true. But why this tendency to always compare Romanian with French, and not, another western Romance language. Always french, always french…
bok is probably Bokmål which is a written standard for Norwegian
Bok refers to Bokmål and Srd probably to Sardinian
NN= Nynorsk BOK=Bokmål both Norwegian
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).
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.
BOK is norwegian
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.
What a bullshit…
And thanks! 🙂
@ Laura Blumenthal: BOK is Bokmål, a dialect of Norwegian (the other being Nynorsk [NN in the diagram]). Can’t help you with SRD though.
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.
I guess Romansh, forth official language in Switzerland, and Provensal, language spoken in south of France
Basque is missing, just write it somewhere without any kind of relation other European languages.
“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.
Is the base of many words Greek?
A legend would be great. I’m curious about Fa.
I’m thinking Faroese, spoken on Faroe islands.
SVK is actually twice as big as SLO, so which one is which in this lexical map ???
SVK is Slovakian because it has Czech as brother language
They always make a mess with Slovenia and Slovakia … too similar name, too similar flag, nothing new 😉
“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…
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).
Albanian is language in its own and one of the older languages in Europe along with Greek
Basque?
BOK = Bokmål, the other Norwegian written type, NN = Nynorsk, the other one.
SAR = Sardinian?
But where are all the 6/7 Sámi languages?
Where’s Basque?!?!?!?!?!????!?!?!?!? …
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;
Except that Dutch got a lot of common words with French
That’s right, everyone. The most utilitarian Romance language to learn is Spanish.
Take *that*, Italian!
Well, Italian sounds much more beuatiful to me. Spanish sounds like barking to me. I’m not Italian by the way.
Laura Blumenthal: BOK = bokmål, traditional Norwegian. Could SRD be Sardinian?
It is Roman language, not Romance!
& you know oh so much about latin and the languages steming from it
Laura, they are respectively Bokmål (a Norwegian language) and Sardinian (spoken in Sardinia, Italy).
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/
@Laura: Bokmål (Norwegian, along with Nynorsk) and Sardinian, is my guess.
Where is turkish??
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.
BOK = Bokmål (Norwegian)
SRD = Sardinian
And Sr? I thought maybe Silesian but yhen why the R?
Does the NN near Bokmål mean Nynorsk?
SRD is “Sardo”, Sardinian language. no clue of what BOK could mean.
Bokmål (litt. “book speech”) and Nynorsk (litt. “New Norwegian”) are the two Norwegian written languages.
French grammar is alive in English , in a small way – the phrase “Attorney General” is a French word order.
As it is a standard phrase, it is more like a lexical item than a grammatical “rule”.
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….)
By 1066 they weren’t Vikings/Norsemen anymore. They’d been in France 150 years, had adopted Christianity and French, and had heavily intermarried with the local population.
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.
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…
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.
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.
Even if the picture is an interesting approach, I agree that is deeply flawed.
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.
Romania-latino i think. But never mind, we are all – Homo Sapiens bro. 🙂
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.
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….
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 😉
You forgot to include Basque…. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basque_language
How about Basque?
I love infographics like this but dismissing this one as soon as I saw Icelandic is the 3rd closest language to English.
If there’s no Scottish, it’s CRAP.
Maltese is the only Semitic official language within the European Union.
Reblogged this on mangialibro.
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.
Where is Basque?
Where is Romansh, one of the 4 spoken languages of Switzerland?
It’s there, abbreviated RM.
Where is the basque language ?
What about bosnian language. It seems it doesn’t exist, does it?
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.
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
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 .
Best comment ever. I was thinking the same thing 😉
Romanian it is quite easy to learn if you have studied Latin at school.
“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.
Where is sami and basc languages?
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.
…any idea where Basque would be on this map?
Legal
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.
What about Euskera? Where is it?
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.
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.
Excellent linguistic map of Europe,
but where is the basque lenguage (euskera)?
One of the oldest leguage in Europe.
Nice work, except there is no Bosnian. Why is it not enlisted with Slavic languages?
Reblogged this on Progressive Geographies and commented:
An interesting linguistic map of Europe.
Perhaps the arrow from FRE to SPA should go from FRE to CAT
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occitano-Romance_languages
the data used for this graph is bullshit or very vague at most; useless talk
Explain, please. Why do you think so? The illustration is without data.
it is misleading in population. missing some languages. Basing stuff off wrong languages. not explaining enough. shall I continue?
I agree, is very vague, for exemple catalan and provençal should be as near as portuguese and gallician
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 ?
What about the Basque?
I think that Catalan and French are much more close related than seen in this graph. And Occitan, should be between the two.
So, where is the Euskara? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basque_language
You forgot the Basque language….
Where is the basque, the only truly european language?
Ok.And what about euskara (basque language)?
Add Bosnian Language next to croatian and serbian, as it’s slightly different from both…
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.
I think that the Albanian language should be placed closer to the Romance languages and away with Slavic languages.
If there is catalan and galician, I wonder where is basque. Because I’m very curios where is it drawed.
What about the basque lenguage?
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..
Where is Basque?
and where is basque? i think the oldest language of europe should appear…
Odd that Greek stands alone…Kalimera
isnt it??!!Are you Greek ?
What about Basque language???
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..
They always make a mess with Slovenia and Slovakia … too similar name, too similar flag, nothing new 😉
No basque no party
Where is the oldest live lenguague of europe? Vasque or euskara
Hungarian is far away any European languages, but you missed out the Basque language. This is more isolated
Reblogged this on Alessandra Ribolini.
I wonder where Romani fits in. I understand the modern language has several different dialects influenced by the majority language in each location.
CATalan is of the same family as PROvençal, both of them right in the middle between SPAnish and FREnch
What about Basque and Maltese?
– also non Indo-eEropean.
Where’s Corse?!
Any clue what “SR” between Polish and Czech stands for?
il Piemontese PMT???? 3.000.000 speakers unesco language but in italy is not recognized !! ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,…………………………………………..
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?
And what about basque language (euskara)? I can’t find this on the map!
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).
where is basque?
where is euskera?
A really bad graphic, specially with the population, have you made it with a dice?
Where is the basque language?
And Basque?
Where is Euskera? or Basque language?
Reblogged this on bengrafton.
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.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And Euskera?
Basque?
Interesting etymological and epistemological point, DanielR. What is the scientific basis for your comment?
…feels kind of lonely….heheheheh
Love from Greece.
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.
This is cool. I particularly enjoy seeing my native tongues sitting apart from most, as they do.
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.”
Where is the Basque Language?
Where is Basque? Over 800.000 speakers in Europe and by far the most ancient language in the continent!
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…
And the Basque??
PRO = provençal i guess.
But “Rm”? It’s killing me. Rumansch?
What about Basque?
where is basque?
there must be a link between Catalan and French !!!
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)
Euskera is missed!!
and Euskera?
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.
Yup, they always make a mess with Slovenia and Slovakia … too similar name, too similar flag, nothing new 😉
basque language missing….
Reblogged this on Filogarte and commented:
Estudiando ruso me estoy alejando más de lo que pensaba 🙂
BOK = Bokmål (most common version of Norwegian). NN = Nynorsk – a less common version of Norwegian.
It’s a pity that we cannot see the distance between Provenzal and Catalan.
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!
Where is Euskera? Out of frame?
What is the unit of lexical distance and how is it worked out?
Where is Basque on the diagram?
Basque is missing. It is a million miles of lexical distance from any of the other European languages anyway, but worth mentioning though.
No place for the Basque?
There is true. It is time for the Independent state of Basque countries.
Where is the basque language?
What happen with the Basque?
I am Catalan, I speak Spanish and French,
I am pretty convinced that Catalan is closer to French than Spanish is to French.
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.
I couldn´t find basque, that is also an european language.
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.
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).
I totally agree. This(map) seems very un-researched
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.
Historical linguistics is probably not your field of study, so I understand your ignorance of it. I agree that the old way of classifying languages by their origins is outdated. Finnish and Hungarian have common history, but Latvian and Finnish are closer to each other in linguistic terms. Alternative truths seem to be in today.
Where would Basque be? (Did I miss it somehow?)
http://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. (-;
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.
🙁
there are some mistakes in this presentation
Where do you place Basque?
at left bottom
http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/mysliwiec/23578286/21144/21144_900.jpg
Where is Turkey in this map?!
Turkey is not in Europe (at least more than 90% of it), right?
turkey isn’t in europe
I love my language u are unique “Albania”
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.
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.
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…
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.
Dear Frank,
You are partially true. I could rely on somepart similar family background and friendship as you showed, but IT DOES NOT MATTER.
First, the lexical distance graph is about the recent vocabulary of each nations. In spite of the fact that the graph is not perfect as distances cannot be precisely measured (and represented) and the author may had some problems with connecting Hungarian, Greek and other languages for sure. 🙂
Second, Hungarian (as all languages) has loanwords exchanged or “borrowed” from other languages… this makes some relationship. Of course it is totally different from other languages but we (so you as well) say “OK” for example. That’s English. Or you may heard “lezser” coming from French “legere” (easy, light, easygoing). None of the cases are represented on the graph because they are newly (not more than 100 years) borrowed words and give less than a 1% of the total vocabulary (several thousands of words). We have a lot of common words with Turkish due to the double “overlap” in our history. Check your Turkish friends for fruit names for ex. 😉
Third, you are also underestimating the amount of real Hungarian words in our modern vocabulary. The 10% was mentioned by someone else as well. Show me the proof for the 10%! I can hardly imagine that a language having only 10% of own and original words in the vocabulary to be so distinct from other languages. In this case we should be so close to other languages as Slovak to Polish for instance. Be realistic, please.
Last, English words widely spread in the last 25 years (not more), especially technical terms that are also spread all around the world.
Albanian language does not have any similarity with Slovenian language…
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 !
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.
Where is Latgalian LTG?
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.
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.
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.
Finnish is not related to Turkish. What makes you think it is?
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.
oh yes, and Romani, speaking of the Roma…..
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
Hi “Finn”,
Our relationship is based on grammar similarities mainly, being both languages agglutinating type (using “postfixes” instead of prefixes of German-Saxon or Latin languages for ex.). On the other hand a few (some tens) words have similar pronounciation or similar etymological root. Fish (Hun: hal – FIN: kala) and similar words.
I consider that based on these “outstanding” facts we could state relationship with Japanese or Basque (the missing language from the graph, searched by hundreds of interested people on this blog 🙂 )
Based on these similarities there was and there is an officially kept Finno-Ugrian theory. On the other hand this leads to a common fishing-harvesting-animal breeding type tribe neighbourhood that is only partially true and was already refused officially by Finnish cca. 20 years ago. Recent genetical studies shows NO relationship with the Finnish language group people and Hungarians.
We (Hungarians) still keep the idea, I don’t know for how long. ??? 🙂
For sure our tribes (several thousands years ago) had neighbouring territories (or a nation between us who loaned the same words to you and us, but it cannot be proven). Someone should dig under the ice covered fields of Middle/North/Central Asia for proofs. 🙂
So somehow the melody of our speech is similar, some words have common roots, but nothing else. No genetic match. And due to the long history far-far away from each other has diminished further relationship… if there were any. 🙂
Could someone possibly decipher all the abriviations and post a key somewhere?
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)
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.
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%……….
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?
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.
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)
Which unit do you use to measure lexical distance?
Ok English has taken many words from French and from Latin, but French comes from Latin ergo…
m sikhna chahta hu english meri english blkul week h
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
anyámborogass, méghogy a magyar, mint finnugor nyelv…!
I’d like to say about a link between romanian language and slavic languages which was not mentioned here..
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.
Albanian ‘The Divine Language’.Only God knows how and when was it created.It’s special.Proud to be my mother tongue
A true Macedonian knows that his language is the origin of all others 😀
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.
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.
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…
I have some doubts about the Greek and its relation to Italian (because of the Latin): shouldn’t be closer than to French?
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.
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.
Please change ” K. Tyshchenko (1999), Metatheory of Linguistics. (Published in Russian.)” to “K. Tyshchenko (2000), Metatheory of Linguistics. (Published in Ukrainian)”
So ..with simple words, Greek Language is the mother language most of all! No surprized …
With simple words you are a morron!
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
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.
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.
Reblogged this on Knocking on Doors and commented:
Lexical Distance Among the Languages of Europe…very interesting.
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.
There are more links with Latvian than Russian for Finnish. Russian is prominent in Helsinki slang.
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.
It’s a language isolate, no discernible connection except influencing spanish in a small way
Agree! Hungarian is NOT member of FINNO-UGRIC language group.
The chart is fascinating no matter how you look at it. Sure it misses some dialects. But still it reflects history, migrations, military history, politics, demography… and what not. It would be quite interesting to follow up the changes and to see the dynamics world-wide.
Catalan is more similar to french than spanish…i’m native speaker of both lenguage and there is more contection between catalan-french , than between spanish and french….
Dutch is most certainly not the closest to Greek among all Germanic languages and neither is Slovene to Albanian amongst Slavonic languages. This map is utter nonsense.
But where’s Euskara (Basque)? It may not be an Indo-European language, but the Basques do live in Europe…
This diagram should have included Turkish. There are at least 30 million Oghuz and Kipchak Turkish speakers in European continent.
If Turkish was on the diagram, it would have been far in the fringes like Hungarian, perhaps down below from Albanian, with a few links to Greek and Romance languages.
Reblogged this on El rostro de arena and commented:
Siempre me ha apasionado la distancia entre los idiomas y la curaduría que suele hacer la lingüística comparada. En este caso os ofrezco una preciosa gráfica encontrada en internet. Nótese con especial atención la leyenda inferior donde explica la diferencia entre los trazos de líneas.
is anyone working to find out the linguistic affinity of Burushaski with other languages? Has it a place among the IE linguistic family? what about its relation with Phrygian and Illyrian languages? or it is still considered to be a member o f Dene-Caucasian linguistic group?
I now realise being fluent in English , German and Hindi that my linguistic paradigm that has evolved naturally in the course of my lifetime is an internal archetypal analogy between my inner reality and the outer geographical locus. The extension of this mapping should definitely extend it’s reach unto India.
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Basque is not there…
ROMANCE languages are actually LATIN languages. there’s no such word as ROMANCE
Where is Basque?
Ok, so there are the lines for the distance, and there are numbers, but there is no sub as to what those numbers are. Like, are they %, are they km? The people dots say that it´s in million of people, but what is your unit for the distance??
Reblogged this on and commented:
Ce diagramme fait apparaître les distances lexicales séparant les principales langues européennes. La taille d’un cercle représente le nombre de locuteur de la langue. Tous les groupes sauf celui des langues finno-ougriennes appartiennent à la familles des langues indo-européenne.
Thanks designed for sharing such a fastidious thinking,
article is fastidious, thats why i have read it fully
Reblogged this on broadyesl and commented:
Lexical Distance Among the Languages of Europe
Hi. Why no connection between Catalan and Provençal? These languages are very similar, both in vocabulary and grammar (and history). And yes, I am a Romance philologist, speaking and having read quite some languages of this group. And why having chosen the name Provenzal and not Occitan (langue d’oc) which is, I believe, much broader?
I think there should be some clarification. The analysis is a bit misleading for several reasons. Does it take into consideration what happened with with the cleaning of languages after nationalism. Also there is no indications of time, the relationship of living languages to dead ones, Also what are the effects of non-European languages on the European languages on Europe borders.
Reblogged this on Parti di lui and commented:
Davvero un must!
Reblogged this on One-World Biz and commented:
With so many businesses operating in international markets, culture and communication is always an issue. Although some languages dominate international trade, they are not universal and do not reach everybody. Furthermore, independently of the language used to communicate, the mother language can dominate the thought process and knowing it allows us to better understand other people, the meanings of what they say, their ways of doing things, their culture.
Here is an interesting post from the blog Etymologikon showing how European languages relate to each other.
This suggests that Welsh is lexically closer to English than Spanish. Look at some text in Spanish, then in Welsh, and tell me which one you can recognize more words in. I like the premise here, but the particulars I’m not buying. There’s also a Catalan/Provençal problem as well, nearly mutually intelligible, but you wouldn’t know it from this. Here Catalan is shown as lexically closer to Spanish and Italian. No. Absolutely … No.
Where is the Bask language?
TY for this marvelous exercise in language connections! My Dad was fluent in Czech (Bohemian was his mother tongue), Polish, Hungarian, Russian and some German. He said Hungarian was hardest to learn because it wasn’t “connected” to the others he was familiar with. TY also for clarifying, for me, why this is true.
see also: http://mentalfloss.com/article/59665/feast-your-eyes-beautiful-linguistic-family-tree
I didn’t read all the comments, but I hope, at least some of them have remarked that there is
a lot of inaccurate information on this picture. Of course, regarding the languages that the person who posted this speaks or has some knowledge of them, everything goes fine (English, French). But what about the Greek or Hungarian? What has Greek to do with Dutch?? Nothing. Why isn’t there a link between Greek and Romanian and Bulgarian? Even if they are “genetically” not related, these languages share the same area, and this has left many marks on them. But it is Hungarian that got the worst classification here: what has this language to do with the Baltic languages?? Why do you link it to them? Why isn’t there a link between Hungarian and German? Hungarian has a lot of German borrowings. And so on. Sorry but this picture really lacks professional knowledge.
Reblogged this on djordjemdjokic.
Reblogged this on europolitico .
Reblogged this on English for You .
Nice visualization, but estimated numbers of speakers are not done well. SVK is not right for sure – we got 5 mil. population, therefore 31 000-300 000 speakers couldn´t be right.
You should leave us Finno-Ugrics out of this Indo-European chart… Here’s a much better chart http://mentalfloss.com/sites/default/files/196.jpg
Relationship between languages is not just a question af lexical elements. Finnish contains 20-25% swedish borrowings, but the grammar of the language is EXTREMELY different from swedeish, and actually different from ANY indoeuropean language. Finnish don’t have any grammatical gender (all nouns have the same gender, there is not even separate pronouns as “he”,”she” or “it”), it does not have any prepositions rather than decline nouns/pronouns into a plethora of cases, more than 15 of them, it has no particles etc.
Just a massive borrowing words doesn’t make languages closely related.
So, I don’t consider english to be a romance language. I have studied french and speak lousy romanian, so I have some insight in the romace grammar. English grammar is much more related to swedish and german grammar, than french. Anyone who knows all the tempuses and moduses of romance verbs will agree. You don’t find a perfect simple indicative in english, but you do in romanian (“perfectul simplu”) and french (“passé simple”) for instance.
Hi ! I am galician (so galician speaker) and I would like to say that galician (GLC code) is not more similar to spanish than to portuguese. As it was said in other comments, galician and portuguese were the same language 500 years ago, and then they took different ways for political reasons (also said before). Yet nowadays some words are taken from spanish, the verbs (and their conjugation) and most words and are still the same as portuguese. So a line joining galician and portuguese should exists. Regards.
Sorry, but LT-LV relationship to Hungarian is nonsense. There have been many studies displaying parallels with sanskrit.
As a Lithuanian, who has been to Hungary many times, I acknowledge no relationship.
Reblogged this on Goals Go Global.
Reblogged this on bestandworstofgermany and commented:
That is so true!
After I started understanding German, I can grasp some Dutch and even some Danish! Very true!
In short, learn German 😀
This is so true! When I started speaking German, I noticed I started grasping some written Dutch and even Scandinavian languages!
Reblogged this on ElderofZyklon's Blog!.
I’m sorry I speak English, Romanian and French and I don’t understand how English is closer to French in lexical terms than French and Romanian. Can somebody explain this?
Reblogged this on olsonvanbuskirk's Blog and commented:
Some of the abbreviations for languages are difficult to figure out if not impossible but this is still pretty cool. Shows the vocabulary differences between languages in an interesting visual chart. So although French and English are in different major language families (Germanic and Romance) they are as similar as English and German which are in the same Germanic language family. Hmmm!
If you would have added Turkish languages to the tree then Hungarian would have links there.
Hungarian: Zsebemben sok kicsi sárga alma van.
Turkish: Cebimde çok küçük sarı elma var.
There are many little yellow apples in my pocket.
If you consider Europe as a continent stretching to the Ural mountains then you should have added the Obi-ugric languages.
Alas I know they are small.
And of course Turkey has a European part on the continent.
It was so easy to tell, and it came as no surprise at all, that this chart was written by an Ukrainian, apparently an ardent russophobe. It has nonsense written all over it. All scientific value of the chart is questioned by a fact that it tries too hard to show Ukrainian and Belarusian language so far from Russian, that in fact it states that Bulgarian and Serbian are closer to Russian than those two (a complete nonsense, since both are South Slavic languages), although Russian, Ukrainian and Belarussian in fact are just but a three dialects of the same language.
Reblogged this on Punkonomics (@DearBalak).
Hello I am a student and I want the initial acceptance to study English in Serbia, and thank you very much
Reblogged this on susiesays.
You missed Bosnian among Slavics.
What about euskera language? It doesn’t appears in any reference!!!!
Wrong… Nice but wrong.
Actually if there is similarities between albanian and roman languages, it is bc for 2 centuries, they took vocabulary from french which was international language, so no relation with romanian 😉
German cominicated with baltic languages through prussian.
Bok (NB) is an artificial language…
there seem to be some missing connections when it comes to ireland, basque being one, although it could be argued the connection between Basque and Gaelic although one could argue that they are tied through the celto Iberian peoples of northen spain, however the before they arived the tuath dedannu were there and they are to be believed to be a nordic people and before then the fir bolg who may have been directly related to the basque people. any thought on that?
Is Basque on here? I don’t see it…
This map of European languages Russian perspective …. very interesting but incomplete probably
I am a native Catalan speaker and I think Catalan is more closely related to French and Italian than Spanish, although it has obvious similarities.
O português e o espanhol são duas línguas que se comprieendem bem e serão as mais faladas no mundo se falassem o portunhol Claro português e Espanhol
Aki utána olvas, az tudja, hogy a finn-ugor elmélet hazugságokra épül. Ez az egész táblázat hamis. A magyar nyelv egy különálló nyelv, semmihez sem hasonlítható. Néhány magyar szó megtalálható iráni városok nevében, némelyek Törökországban, Japánban, Kínában is. A finnugor elméletet a 17. században találták ki, hogy elmagyartalanítsák a magyarságot.
Im Slovenian, we have nothing in common with ALbanian, they are from other part of Europe…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavic_languages
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithuanian_language
Polish should not be connected to Lithuanian language. It is Slavik language.
Lithuanian language s Proto-Indo-European, having roots in Sanscrit or Anciant Greek.
It is a mistake to connect Lithuanian with Polish or any Slavic language. Languages has nothing in common, appart from common history of the countries. Lithuanian is more connected to Sanskrit and both Latvian and Lithuanian are seperate group as it is, They are one of the oldest languages in the world. As is Georgian language, which is not represented at all.
The languages spoken by the Sami in northern Sweden/Finland and Norway are missing
I have hard time believing that Bulgarian and Serbian are much closer to Russian than Belorussian. I speak Russian, Belorussian, and understand Ukrainian for the most part (agree that Belorussian and Ukrainian are close). But Bulgarian sounds like a gibberish to me.
Honestly speaking, I was always in search of information for a tool, jargon, calibrating methods and comparative analysis of Indo-European languages. This article is perhaps for the first time privileges me with the same.
Now I can start few projects, which were in my notebook for a long time.
Thank you. Thank you indeed.
Hungarian language is the most ancient language in Europe and it is NOT belong to finnugorian language family. This is the right. We, Hungarians like Finns, Estonians, Lapps, and osztjákok, manysik, hantik etc. but we are not belong to them. This is the time to tell the truth.
French is not the “top” of Romance group but it’s the newest and have been influenced by the Latin (Romans), the Celt (older but fewer because of the almost exclusively oral tradition of the Celts), the German (thru the Franks but the Franks adopted the latin) and the Greek which was brought thru the Romans and their colonie of Massilia.
Before the Romans invaded the Gauls and killed around two millions Gaulishs, the first language in the Gauls was a Celtic (mostly Brythonic) language.
The English is more close from the French than the German.
Almost the half of the English language are taking their source in the French.
Both French an English have also some old Celtic roots.
The English, as the French, is also a young language with multiple influences.
Reblogged this on Clemens P. Suter Blog.
It did not add French grammar??? So what about forming the comparative and superlative by adding more/most in front of an adjective rather than using the Germanic er/ est endings (e.g. more beautiful vs. nicer/nicest). What about the “of-genitive” (President of the U.S.) compared to the Germanic ‘s (as in the President’s office). English does surely have French/Norman influence in Grammar, too.
Please advise? Where is Turkic and/or Altaic?
Turkey is part of Europe….Hungarian is linked.
I have heard recordings of Uighur language, also Turkic, very similar sounds.
https://www.countries-ofthe-world.com/countries-of-europe.html
Please advise? Where is Turkic and/or Altaic?
Turkey is part of Europe….Hungarian is linked.
I have heard recordings of Uighur language, also Turkic, very similar sounds.
https://www.countries-ofthe-world.com/countries-of-europe.html
What language is BOK?
were is basque language?
Super intéressant. Mais manque le basque…
Well I speak Hungarian…MAGYAR to be exact and the distance is the greatest from all of you…:-) So, analyse that! The language is phonetic, so once anyone learnes the alphabet, he/she can read and pronounce properly and write from hearing the spoken language correctly. Took more than a thousand years of evolution to get to where we are today. Naturally foreign words creep in and Magyarized, as technogy and foreign art, films etc. enter the culture. We know that our language is one of the most difficult to learn from scratch.
Reblogged this on Camillas Värmdöblogg.
While interesting, showing Catalan as being directly linked to Spanish and Italian but absolutely no link with French and Provençal (which is its closest relative) is a huge mistake. I don’t know about the accuracy of the rest of the chart, but this bit certainly is not.
Also, where is Basque? Did I just miss it or it isn’t there?
Reblogged this on Camillas Värmdöblogg.
Love it. Stealing your map.
Bullshit, serbian is more similar with macedonian instead bulgarian.
Reblogged this on Genea-Search and commented:
Hungarians have always been on the edge.
Én is Magyarországról vagyok. 🙂
Slovenian is spoken by less than 3 million, Slovakiab by more than 3 million people.
Where is Armenian in this chart? It has traditionally always been paired with Albanian.
Was it not so, thst very many latin based words are not a result of direct fremch influence, but rather incorporated direct from latin among upper classes in the 18th century?
I would add a link of German influence on Czech and other Slavic languages from historical and geographical reasons.
Where does Basque (País Vasco, Northern Iberia) come into this picture, when not totally (and comfortably) ignored? Is it closer to India than Europe, as I read somewhere?
What about Armenian language unique and oldest that survived till now
Finns and Estonians are not related to the Hungarians, who are Turkic laguage actually, belonging to the same group with Bulgars, Uigurs, Hunogurs and Huns. Hungarians and Huns are one and the same. As also Madyars.
Reblogged this on Persona and commented:
This is extremely interesting.
There should be some lines, however distant, between Romanian and the neighbouring Slavic languages: Bulgarian, Serbian, Slovak and perhaps also Ukrainian. We don’t like it, but it is there. Far more than Albanian, to which the links, though more ancient, are very thin.
Where and how does de “Euskera” or “Basque” language position, accirding to this chart? I see that you’ve included the Catalan so I would assume that such an old and comolex language as the Euskera would be taken into account?
Thank you,
Poor you where is Armenian and Georgian???
Why were Maltese, Basque and Yiddish left out? What is the dotted pathway between Portuguese and Irish all about? Why no dotted pathway between Galego and Irish?
Why no Cornish in the Celtic section?
Would like to see Cornish (Ker) on there, probably between Welsh and Breton.
French added SOME grammar, for example ‘more intelligent’ in contrast with the German structure ‘cleverer’.
Μα καλά ! Κανείς δεν έχει διαβάσει τολεξικό των Λιντελ & Σκώτ;;; Εκεί θα καταλάβει ΄πόσο λάθος είναι αυτό το διάγραμμα… Κρίμα…!
Bullshit. It shows Slovene with more than 3M speakers (while there aren’t so many ppl in Slovenia) and Slovak as less than 3M speakers (while there are 5M ppl in Slovakia).
When I spot an error so easily, how can I trust the rest?
Here some comments about the reliability of the data in the chart: http://inform-al.blogspot.rs/2017/03/lexical-distance-among-languages-of.html
Great! Thank you!
How come that old Greek is so different from today’s Greek? So are we talking about the old “Greek” or today’s one?
Old Greek is more close to Albanian then actual Greek.
I see a chart build upon assumptions. The term “indo-european” is so euphemistic because it joins European and Indian, languages as being of one family, but in one side it is impossible that we have been one family whatever the time we go back, and in the other side, we’ve never seen a single European word explained from Indian languahes and vice versa. How is it possible?
There is a total ignorance regarding the Albanian Language, which is not only the oldest of all languages, but it has a direct contribute to all of the vocabularies of The European Languages. Albanian Language is fundamental and the only one to be able to explain the real meaning of so many words in common use through Europe, it can explain names, family names, geographical names throughout all the world, even in space, many scientific terms (if not all) will have a real meaning instead of the fake ones referring to Latin or Greek.
Ignoring Albanian Language, you have simultaneously ignored your own language and the Language as science
If you wish for to get a good deal from this article then you have to apply such techniques to your won website.
“Bok” is Norwegian Bokmål (NN is Norwegian Nynorsk), and “Srd” is Sardinian.
In fact no matter if someone doesn’t be aware of
afterward its up to other viewers that they will help, so here it occurs.
suami on kyl parsa kieli !!!!!111!!!!!!!11!!!! likee jos sul ei oo sukkii!!!1!!!!!
What language is written as ‘BOK’ and
Reblogged this on د. معتز خالد سعد | Dr. Motaz Saad.
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I agree with Manuel that if coming from Latin and coming from French sounds like 60% Romance language.
English as a hybrid language, nor Germanic, nor Latin