

Languages of the World (Wide Web) - mark_h
http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2011/07/languages-of-world-wide-web.html

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reirob
Very very interesting. Especially for people speaking several languages.

Here some of my personal interpretation on the graphs - I am speaking German,
French, Russian:

* German:

The many links to German sites I would tend to explain (a) by geographical
neighbourhood (France, Netherlands, Denmark, Poland, Czech/Slovak, Italy,
Slovenia with Austria); (b) by national minorities present in Germany for
different historical reasons (Italian, Turkish, Polish, Greek (immigrants
helped to reconstruct Germany after 2nd WW); ex Yugoslavian (refuges during
Yugoslavian wars )); ex-German colonies/settlements like Hungary, part of
Poland

Very interesting for me that the only link that in 2 directions is with
France! For me it shows that Germans like very much French and are willing to
learn it. I do not know if the feelings are the same for the opposite (French
learning German), but I can see that there are more and more French people
starting to learn German - and knowing the linguistic introversion of French
this really a sign of change to more openness.

Very surprising to see Mongolian sites to link to German sites? Why is this?
Any explanation?

* Armenian/Georgian:

1) How comes that there strong bidirectional links between Armenian/Georgian
and Belarus? I was not at all aware that many Armenians/Georgians are living
in Belarus? And the languages are really different! Could somebody enlighten
me?

2) I am very surprised that there is no link between Armenian and French?!
This is very strange, because in France there is a very strong Armenian
population and historically France was the first country to provide asylum to
Armenians. Does it mean that the Armenian community in France is isolating
from their roots?

3) Finally it is funny to see how their is no link between Turkish and
Armenian at all. Not really surprising knowing the history, but still sad.

* Russian:

Did you see that from Russian there are no relevant links to other languages?
And all the links to Russian are from former Soviet Union republics where
Russian was mandatory in school. I bet this will change in mid or long term
future! I strongly believe that many West European countries will make an
effort to learn Russian and I hope that Russian government will make some of
efforts in this direction. Sure this is biased because I love the Russian
language and literature.

* Turkish:

Very surprised how isolated Turkish is. The only link being Azerbaijani which
is a very similar language. I expected to see many more links to Turkish from
other Ex-Soviet countries with close linguistic relationship (Turkmen,
Kazhakh, Uzbekh, ...)

When looking to the graph that shows the relationship with English it is
surprising that there is a strong link from Turkish to English, but nothing in
reverse direction. How comes? Does it mean that there is no much of Turkish
content that would be interesting for English audience (with Turskish roots)?
Look how it is the same with the relationship between Turkish and German.

* Spanish:

Not very surprising that there are only links TO Spanish and no links FROM
Spanish.

~~~
bane
Your observations on the Russian and Turkish subgraphs I think are spot on.
There are a few other anomalies that I find interesting as well.

I'd love to see a 2011 version of this same graph.

------
bane
The graphs are also apparently minus Korean.

