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"Nerd" is understood by 2.6 billion !!

 Language Learning Forum : General discussion Post Reply
10 messages over 2 pages: 1 2  Next >>
Hashimi
Senior Member
Oman
Joined 6258 days ago

362 posts - 529 votes 
Speaks: Arabic (Written)*
Studies: English, Japanese

 
 Message 1 of 10
29 September 2015 at 10:04pm | IP Logged 

Do you know that the word "nerd" is understood by at least 2.6 billion people around
the world speaking in different languages?

Check this interesting website:

http://www.ezglot.com/word.php?l=eng&w=nerd

You can enter any word to see a "word map" (and how many people know the word
approximately).

Other interesting sections:

* The most similar languages:

http://www.ezglot.com/most-similar-languages.php#most-simila r-languages

Did you know that Esperanto is closest to Spanish?

or that Italian has more of Spanish than Latin?


* The common words between English and any other language:

http://www.ezglot.com/common-words.php?l=eng

* The common words between X and any other language:

http://www.ezglot.com/common-words.php

It is not very accurate, especially for non-major languages because it uses data from
Wiktionary and similar databases, but it is interesting.



5 persons have voted this message useful



Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6596 days ago

9753 posts - 15779 votes 
4 sounds
Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish

 
 Message 2 of 10
01 October 2015 at 3:26am | IP Logged 
Loud, simplistic claims make me sceptical.
5 persons have voted this message useful



Alphathon
Groupie
Scotland
Joined 4179 days ago

60 posts - 104 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Scottish Gaelic

 
 Message 3 of 10
02 October 2015 at 2:46am | IP Logged 
This page looks familiar to me and I feel like it may have been created by one of HTLAL's users. I may be confusing it with a different site though.

I'm equally sceptical. I had a quick look at the "most similar languages" list and of particular interest to me are:
• how high some of the pairs are, particularly Mandarin Chinese—Japanese and Northern Sami—Norwegian Bokmål. These are both language pairs which are close geographically and culturally, so are likely to have significant borrowings, but the fact that they beat pairs which are so closely related that they are mutual intelligible ((Scottish) Gaelic—Irish, Dutch—Afrikaans etc) seems dubious.
• the complete lack of some seemingly obvious pairs, such as Danish—Bokmål

I also took a quick look at my TLs on the "Common words with English page". Both include some peculiar entries such as country and personal names (gd: Tòmas, Canada, Iosrael, Abrahàm, Mìchael; de: India, Japan) which I'm not sure should be included. (I can see a case for the countries, but the personal names seem very shaky.)

Edit: There are also some seemingly shaky word-pairs; I cannot speak for Gaelic as I am not yet advanced enough, but unless there're some rare homographs at play which I haven't come across, the German Liste, Phonem and Teil do not mean listen, phone and while.

Edited by Alphathon on 02 October 2015 at 3:12am

3 persons have voted this message useful



Hashimi
Senior Member
Oman
Joined 6258 days ago

362 posts - 529 votes 
Speaks: Arabic (Written)*
Studies: English, Japanese

 
 Message 4 of 10
03 October 2015 at 12:46am | IP Logged 
Wiki


Edited by Hashimi on 03 October 2015 at 12:47am

1 person has voted this message useful



Maecenas23
Triglot
Newbie
Ukraine
Joined 4610 days ago

21 posts - 56 votes 
Speaks: Ukrainian*, Russian, English
Studies: German

 
 Message 5 of 10
06 October 2015 at 2:21am | IP Logged 
The page with the most similar languages is totally false. For example, from a linguistic
point of view, Russian and Ukrainian have approximately 73% similarity, Russian and
Belorussian -90%, Czech and Polish - 87%, Spanish and Portuguese - 92%, Danish and
Swedish - around 85%. The page was created by some extremely incompetent people.

Edited by Maecenas23 on 06 October 2015 at 10:27am

2 persons have voted this message useful



Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6596 days ago

9753 posts - 15779 votes 
4 sounds
Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish

 
 Message 6 of 10
06 October 2015 at 3:55pm | IP Logged 
I'm not sure where your numbers come from but I tend to agree with them :)
1 person has voted this message useful



Monox D. I-Fly
Senior Member
Indonesia
monoxdifly.iopc.us
Joined 5134 days ago

762 posts - 664 votes 
Speaks: Indonesian*

 
 Message 7 of 10
09 October 2015 at 5:56pm | IP Logged 
Hashimi wrote:

Did you know that Esperanto is closest to Spanish?



Huh? I thought Esperanto and Spanish are the same.
1 person has voted this message useful





jeff_lindqvist
Diglot
Moderator
SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 6908 days ago

4250 posts - 5711 votes 
Speaks: Swedish*, English
Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French
Personal Language Map

 
 Message 8 of 10
11 October 2015 at 10:05am | IP Logged 
Seriously? Esperanto is a created language, a little over 100 years old. Spanish is a Romance language and has been spoken for ages.


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