
Lexical Distance Among Languages of Europe (2015) - lelf
https://alternativetransport.wordpress.com/2015/05/05/34/
======
binrec
Interesting map.

The methodology probably wouldn't be comparable to Tyshchenko's, but there is
an estimate for the lexical distance between Tocharian and the other Indo-
European language families (10.2307/601651) - Tocharian comes out closest to
Germanic and Greek.

Then again, Tocharian wasn't spoken anywhere near Europe when it was attested,
so it isn't strictly within the scope of the map - but it's unclear how it got
there. The most popular view, as far as I know, is that it was the second
family to branch off of Indo-European, after Anatolian, but Adams showed that
it shares some innovations with Germanic (the reflexes of syllabic resonants
and the expansion of the singulative function of the n-stems to adjectives)
and Greek (a locative dual *-oisi, represented in the Tocharian B genitive
dual), and Eric Hamp placed Tocharian in a 'Northern Indo-European' subgroup
with Germanic, Balto-Slavic, and Albanian.

------
thomasfl
Norwegian is among the languages most closely related to english. Everybody
who would like to learn a second language besides english, can easily learn
norwegian. Only drawback is that there are fever people speaking norwegian
than there are inhabitants in new york city. Written norwegian is almost
phonetic.

~~~
Tade0
Pardon for the potentially offensive remark, but to me it always looked a lot
like German.

I had German in school for a total of six years and this had a side effect of
giving me the ability to read a newspaper in Norwegian with a rough
understanding what the text was about.

~~~
jfk13
Yes, Norwegian (along with Swedish and Danish) does have a fairly close
connection to German.

When I began German in school (at around age 13, iirc), the fact that I had
already learned Swedish as a child (due to family roots) gave me a noticeable
head start over the rest of the class. Many German words that would have been
completely foreign to me as an English speaker were immediately understandable
through Swedish.

------
Tade0
My experience as a Polish native speaker is that slavic languages are indeed
close, with the differences usually boiling down to one of the two:

Borrowing a word and changing its meaning - e.g. Russian _запомнить_
(zapomnit') - "to remember" sounds a lot like Polish _zapomnieć_ \- "to
forget".

Creating a different word, but with the same idea - e.g. Slovakian vlak
(train) a Polish pociąg (train). To a Polish person these two words sound as
if the former was derived from _wlec_ (to drag) and the latter from _ciągnąć_
(to pull).

I spent two weeks in Ukraine and once I learned the alphabet, signs were
mostly intelligible, even though some familiarly sounding words had a
different meaning.

~~~
tropdrop
Since all these languages were fathered by Slavic, I would think of it less in
terms of a group of people "borrowing a word" from another and then "changing
its meaning," and more like branches of a tree, the root a stable association
between phonemes and concept.

So, for a word like zapomnit' (запомнить/zapomnieć) - we have prefix 'za' and
root 'pomni-'. За is a preposition with meaning = behind. Помни- is a
derivative of память (pamat') with meaning = memory.

Putting those two together, we have "behind memory." Now parse what those two
sounds, "behind memory", can mean - does this phrase mean something that you
fail to retrieve from the back recesses of your memory? Or is it something you
stash into the back of your memory for safekeeping?

Russian speakers and Polish speakers seem to have arrived at opposite
interpretations of this phrase. However, it is obvious that they started from
the same place (behind + memory).

~~~
Mediterraneo10
> За is a preposition with meaning = behind.

In the case of Russian, the _za_ here is not a preposition literally meaning
‘behind’ but rather an already fully grammaticalized marker of inchoative
aspect that one encounters in a number of other verbs like засыпать ‘to fall
asleep’. Russian запомнить is analyzable as ‘start’ + ‘remembering’.

~~~
tropdrop
Sure. However, for this simple illustration of how sound bites evolve in
meaning over time, I think it makes more sense to look at the semantics of the
phoneme "za" rather than the prefix's technical grammatical meaning (though
your addendum is useful and correct).

~~~
Mediterraneo10
> the semantics of the phoneme "za"

The thing is, the “phoneme” [sic] _za_ has an array of meanings, and this was
true already by the Proto-Slavic stage. Sure, one could recommend as a
mnemonic device that a learner see Russian _zapomnit’_ ‘commit to memory’ as a
compound of ‘behind’ + ‘remember’, but that isn’t the actual etymology of the
word. It is a folk etymology.

~~~
tropdrop
You're not really arguing with me here - my point _is_ that 'za' had a
multitude of meanings prior to the split of West and East Slavic.

~~~
Mediterraneo10
Yes, I am arguing with you here. Your misuse of terminology like “phoneme”,
and your inappropriate suggestion that the meaning ‘behind’ has any role here,
merited being called out so that other people reading this thread, who may not
be familiar with Slavic diachrony or historical linguistics in general, know
to ignore your points.

~~~
tropdrop
It is quite possible to be extremely knowledgeable about a field and dole out
nuggets of wisdom in such a way as to inspire others to take more interest and
share their ideas with you.

It is also possible to demoralize and silence newcomers by taking every
opportunity to show how far you are above them, and how unworthy they are of
your superior knowledge base.

One of those approaches leads to more productive thought and breakthroughs
than the other.

~~~
Mediterraneo10
You will find plenty of linguists who feel that misusing terminology and
making inaccurate claims like you did does more harm than good. It would have
better had those comments not been posted at all, but once they are posted,
then someone has to call them out as flawed. Calling them out as flawed is not
“showing how far I [or anyone else] is above” a particular poster. It is
simply an attempt to help the community here out by encouraging readers to get
their information from some other, more reliable source.

You’ll find that HN tends to react badly to inaccurate posting on any
scientific field, and one of the great things about this venue is that there
are many trained people in various sciences who can call out wrong as wrong.

------
enriquto
From my experience, it does not make a lot of sense to me. Spanish is much
closer to portuguese (being nearly mutually understandable) than to italian or
catalan. Occitan and catalan are extremely close, but here they appear
unrelated.

~~~
dmca2
Spanish-Portuguese has a solid line while Italian-Portuguese and Portuguese-
Spanish are dashed, so the chart agrees with you.

I don't think the spatial potions represent anything, other than allowing the
grouping and giving a rough guide at a glance.

~~~
pjmlp
I also miss the connections between Galician, Portuguese and Catalan.

Unless the way of reading the graph is a different one than what I am thinking
about.

------
arethuza
I'd love to see something like this for the Scots Doric dialect I spoke as a
child (not in school, obviously)

e.g. Using fit, far, fan, fa for What, Where, When and Who not to mention
loons and quines for boys and girls.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doric_dialect_(Scotland)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doric_dialect_\(Scotland\))

------
jajag
One of the things that's surprised me from learning both Spanish and German is
that whilst for a small, basic set of vocabulary, German and English are very
similar (e.g. Haus, Schuh, Hund vs. Casa, Zapato or Pero in Spanish), the two
languages diverge massively for higher level vocabularies whilst Spanish seems
to converge (for example, importante, diferente, imposible vs. wichtig,
anders, unmöglich). The net effect is that my Spanish comprehension is
considerable better than my German - I can read a news article in Spanish and
get a reasonably good gist of what it says; but I still find myself all at sea
when reading even relatively simple phrases in German - typically wondering to
myself _what the hell verb is that?_

~~~
jcranmer
English is a Germanic language, except it greatly simplified its grammatical
inflection, and then had its vocabulary infused with Romance stock first from
the long-term use of Norman French as the prestige language of England and
then from the proclivity for Latin (and Greek, but that's not a Romance
language) roots in scientific coinage during the Renaissance and Modern
periods. In terms of modern vocabulary, more words have a Romance root than a
Germanic root. As a random factoid, the third-person plural pronouns in
English actually come from Old Norse (courtesy of the Viking invasions, which
resulted in a large portion of England being dominated by Danes instead of
Anglo-Saxons until around the Norman invasion).

~~~
jajag
I think you're right about many words coming to English directly from Latin
during the renaissance and following periods, but it raises another
interesting question - why did English take many technical words and terms
from Latin, whilst German speakers - who presumably during the renaissance
were consulting the same source material - coined their own Germanic words and
terms instead?

------
ignoramous
/offtopic

> It has been a while since the Croats and Serbians have decided that they do
> not speak the same language and this is accurately depicted above but the
> Bosnians and Montenegrin also decided that they have their own language.

So much animosity, I did not always quite comprehend why until I met a Kosovar
in London during the Championships in 2018 and revealed to them my
astonishment over Novak Djokovic's comeback, and they said 'I'd rather kill a
Serb' [0] (than be in awe of their accomplishments). I could almost feel their
hatered but I implored them to forgive and move on. That interaction prompted
me to look up the history on WW2 in the Balkans [1] and the subsequent
Yusgoslav Wars and I could see why [2][3] this tragedy of epic proportions
among a group only separated by differences in religion has come to pass: It
boiled down to how a few were able to sway the many [4][5][6].

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-
Serbian_sentiment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Serbian_sentiment)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ustashe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ustashe)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srebrenica_massacre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srebrenica_massacre)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Horseshoe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Horseshoe)

[4]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18433883](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18433883)

[5]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1570850](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1570850)

[6]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14190764#14192475](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14190764#14192475)

~~~
saiya-jin
I wish there would be an easy solution to these 'seeds of evil'. Its easy for
an outsider like you and me to say 'just forgive', because its the best and
most sane thing to do. Unfortunately many human beings don't work like that,
emotions often run the show.

And who knows, maybe it I experienced what they did, maybe I would be the
same, or worse. I mean, if somebody raped and murdered my family in front of
my eyes and laughed while doing it, forgiveness would be probably impossible
for me.

The only advice that usually works - wait for few generations. Those scarred
will take their wounds to the grave, and young usually don't want to carry too
much of the burden of previous generations, which is good.

------
Myrmornis
Curious. My personal experience is that as an English speaker the Romance
languages seem much closer than German does. But the article places English in
the Germanic cluster with a distance of 49 to German vs 56 to French. Yet for
most English speakers I would guess that they find it easier to make some
sense out of reading French than German.

Beautiful visualization and interesting data set.

~~~
timbit42
Old English came from Old German but after the Normans conquered southern
England in 1066, English adopted many French words, making the Romance
languages easier to learn.

------
0-_-0
I long suspected that Hungarian was the most separate from the rest of the
European languages.

~~~
jcranmer
Most European languages are Indo-European. The exceptions are:

* Basque, a language isolate which is generally considered by many to be the sole surviving remnant of pre-Indo-European languages in Europe.

* The Balto-Finnic languages (not to be confused with the Baltic languages!), primarily Finnish and Estonian, of the Uralic language family.

* The Saami languages, another part of the Uralic language family, of the indigenous peoples of northern Scandinavia.

* Hungarian, yet another Uralic language, although this one seems geographically out of place.

* Depending on how you divide the borders of Europe, there are representatives of Turkic languages in Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan. There are also some Kartvelian languages and other language isolates in the Caucasian region (primarily Georgia)--note that Armenian is Indo-European.

Indo-European languages are though to originate from the steppe region on the
North side of the Black and Caspian Seas, and then get diffused through
various waves of linguistic migration into the rest of Europe. Uralic
languages probably originate in the northern forest zones of Russia
(eventually being pushed out of their homeland by the Slavic branch of Indo-
European). At some point, the language migrated onto a steppe confederation
which eventually settled in Hungary, which is why it seems out of place. About
1500 years ago, give or take, the steppe confederations shifted from Indo-
European dominance to Turkic dominance, which is what prompts the rise of
Turkic languages on the margins of Europe.

~~~
Mediterraneo10
> Depending on how you divide the borders of Europe, there are representatives
> of Turkic languages in Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan.

There are representatives of Turkic well within a mainstream definition of
Europe: West Rumelian Turkish in the Balkans, Gagauz in Moldova, Crimean Tatar
in Crimea, and (though perhaps now departing from the mainstream definition)
several Turkic languages in European Russia north of the Caucasus such as
Karachay-Balkar and Mishar Tatar.

------
GrryDucape
Also using Wikidata links, you’ll get support for many more languages. It is
also much easier to process by bots to get more relevant statistics on many
more terms than the very anglo-centered and too limited Swadesh list.

~~~
Mediterraneo10
Can you point to any publications criticizing the Swadesh list as “Anglo-
centered”? That is something I would be interested in reading about.
Personally, I have viewed the Swadesh list as rather American Indian
linguistics-centric, though its application was easily extended to other
peoples around the world at a similar level of technological development.

