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Tim HuttonTim Hutton - 2014-01-15 23:26:17+0000 - Updated: 2014-01-15 23:26:17+0000
Originally shared by Yuri WolfGraph of lexical similarity [1] between languages of Europe, (part of the Indo-European family of languages [2]).

This graph originates from a 2008 blog post [3] by Teresa Elms. The data behind the graph are published in a 2000 book ”Метатеорія Мовознавства” [4] (“Metatheory of Linguistics”) by Ukrainian linguist Konstantin Tyshchenko [5] (Teresa Elms, apparently erroneously, cites this work as ”K. Tyshchenko (1999), <...> (Published in Russian)”; the book seems to be offered by Ukrainian booksellers but I couldn’t find any identifying information such as ISBN).

For some reason in early January 2014 the blogosphere exploded with references to this map. Teresa’s blog seems to be abandoned since 2008, but this post received many hundreds of comments in the last several days.

Interesting in itself, but also as an example of non-linear propagation of knowledge.

[1] http://elms.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/lexicaldistanceielangs.jpg
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_languages
[3] http://elms.wordpress.com/2008/03/04/lexical-distance-among-languages-of-europe/
[4] http://linguist.univ.kiev.ua/museum/book/index.html [in Ukrainian]
[5] http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%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 [in Russian]

#linguistics #visualization #scienceandsociety
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Reshared by: Carlos Portela

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