Languages are home windows into the worlds of the individuals who converse them – reflecting what they worth and expertise day by day.
So maybe it’s no shock totally different languages spotlight totally different areas of vocabulary. Students have famous that Mongolian has many horse-related phrases, that Maori has many phrases for ferns, and Japanese has many phrases associated to style.
Some hyperlinks are unsurprising, resembling German having many phrases associated to beer, or Fijian having many phrases for fish. The linguist Paul Zinsli wrote a complete ebook on Swiss-German phrases associated to mountains.
In our recently-published research we took a broad method in direction of understanding the hyperlinks between totally different languages and ideas.
Utilizing computational strategies, we recognized areas of vocabulary which might be attribute of particular languages, to supply perception into linguistic and cultural variation.
Our work provides to a rising understanding of language, tradition, and the best way they each relate.
Japanese has many phrases associated to style. One among these is umami, which is usually used to explain the wealthy style of matcha inexperienced tea.
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Our technique
We examined 163 hyperlinks between languages and ideas, drawn from the literature.
One instance of an idea we checked out was “horse”, for which the top-scoring languages included French, German, Kazakh and Mongolian. This implies dictionaries in these languages had a comparatively excessive variety of
phrases for horses. As an example, Mongolian аргамаг means “a good racing or riding horse”
phrases associated to horses. As an example, Mongolian чөдөрлөх means “to hobble a horse”.
Nonetheless, additionally it is attainable the counts have been influenced by “horse” showing in instance sentences for unrelated phrases.
Not a hoax in spite of everything?
Our findings assist most hyperlinks beforehand highlighted by researchers, together with that Hindi has many phrases associated to like and Japanese has many phrases associated to obligation and responsibility.
‘Silk’ was some of the common ideas for Mandarin Chinese language.
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We have been particularly excited by testing the concept Inuit languages have many phrases for snow. This infamous declare has lengthy been distorted and exaggerated. It has even been dismissed because the “great Eskimo vocabulary hoax”, with some specialists saying it merely isn’t true.
However our outcomes recommend the Inuit snow vocabulary is certainly distinctive. Out of 616 languages, the language with the highest rating for “snow” was Jap Canadian Inuktitut. The opposite two Inuit languages in our knowledge set (Western Canadian Inuktitut and North Alaskan Inupiatun) additionally achieved excessive scores for “snow”.
The Jap Canadian Inuktitut dictionary in our dataset contains phrases resembling kikalukpok, which implies “noisy walking on hard snow”, and apingaut, which implies “first snow fall”.
The highest 20 languages for “snow” included a number of different languages of Alaska, resembling Ahtena, Dena’ina and Central Alaskan Yupik, in addition to Japanese and Scots.
Scots contains phrases resembling doon-lay, that means “a heavy fall of snow”, feughter that means “a sudden, slight fall of snow”, and fuddum, that means “snow drifting at intervals”.
You’ll be able to discover our findings utilizing the instrument we developed, which lets you establish the highest languages for any given idea, and the highest ideas for a specific language.
Language and setting
Though the languages with prime scores for “snow” are all spoken in snowy areas, the top-ranked languages for “rain” weren’t all the time from the rainiest components of the world.
As an example, South Africa has a medium degree of rainfall, however languages from this area, resembling Nyanja, East Taa and Shona, have many rain-related phrases. That is in all probability as a result of, in contrast to snow, rain is essential for human survival – which implies individuals nonetheless speak about it in its absence.
For audio system of East Taa, rain is each comparatively uncommon and fascinating. That is mirrored in phrases resembling lábe ||núu-bâ, an “honorific form of address to thunder to bring rain” and |qába, which refers back to the “ritual sprinkling of water or urine to bring rain”.
Our instrument may also be used to discover numerous ideas associated to notion (“smell”), emotion (“love”) and cultural beliefs (“ghost”).
The highest-scoring languages for “smell” embody a cluster of Oceanic languages resembling Marshallese, which has phrases resembling jatbo that means “smell of damp clothing”, meļļā that means “smell of blood”, and aelel that means “smell of fish, lingering on hands, body, or utensils”.
Previous to our analysis, the scent phrases of the Pacific Islands had acquired little consideration.
Some caveats
Though our evaluation reveals many fascinating hyperlinks between languages and ideas, the outcomes aren’t all the time dependable – and must be checked towards authentic dictionaries the place attainable.
For instance, the highest ideas for Plautdietsch (Mennonite Low German) embody von (“of”), den (“the”) and und (“and”) – all of that are unrevealing. We excluded comparable phrases from different languages utilizing Wiktionary, however our technique didn’t filter out these frequent phrases for Plautdietsch.
Additionally, the phrase counts mirror each dictionary definitions and different parts, resembling instance sentences. Whereas our evaluation excluded phrases which might be particularly more likely to seem in instance sentences (resembling “woman” and “father”), such phrases might have nonetheless influenced our outcomes to some extent.
Most significantly, our outcomes run the danger of perpetuating doubtlessly dangerous stereotypes if taken at face worth. So we urge warning and respect whereas utilizing the instrument. The ideas it lists for any given language present, at finest, a crude reflection of the cultures related to that language.
