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European Language Map

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9 messages over 2 pages: 1 2  Next >>
pesahson
Diglot
Senior Member
Poland
Joined 5488 days ago

448 posts - 840 votes 
Speaks: Polish*, English
Studies: French, Portuguese, Norwegian

 
 Message 1 of 9
15 January 2014 at 4:48pm | IP Logged 
Great map for language lovers published by the Guardian.
It's not perfect, it uses Google Translate and covers only Europe, but it's good fun.

European Word Translator
15 persons have voted this message useful



Henkkles
Triglot
Senior Member
Finland
Joined 4013 days ago

544 posts - 1141 votes 
Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish
Studies: Russian

 
 Message 2 of 9
15 January 2014 at 7:20pm | IP Logged 
Finnish and Estonian translations were off right in the first things I tried. I guess the IE languages are more accurate.
1 person has voted this message useful



Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6357 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 3 of 9
15 January 2014 at 7:29pm | IP Logged 
HTLAL'ers started playing around and the google translate quota was exceeded...
1 person has voted this message useful



Mooby
Senior Member
Scotland
Joined 5865 days ago

707 posts - 1219 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Polish

 
 Message 4 of 9
15 January 2014 at 8:45pm | IP Logged 
Just when I thought I'd got my wanderlust under control, this comes along!!

Dziękuję pesahson :)
2 persons have voted this message useful



renaissancemedi
Bilingual Triglot
Senior Member
Greece
Joined 4118 days ago

941 posts - 1309 votes 
Speaks: Greek*, Ancient Greek*, EnglishC2
Studies: French, Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew

 
 Message 5 of 9
15 January 2014 at 9:34pm | IP Logged 
This is fun!

c'est amusant

это весело

Bu eğlenceli

Αυτό είναι διασκέδαση (baaad greek translation...I don't know about the rest)
1 person has voted this message useful



Γρηγόρη
Tetraglot
Groupie
United States
Joined 4215 days ago

55 posts - 154 votes 
Speaks: English*, Greek, Latin, Ancient Greek
Studies: German, French, Russian

 
 Message 6 of 9
16 January 2014 at 5:25pm | IP Logged 
The map is only as good as Google Translate, which tends to be more woodenly literal for certain languages. So,
for example, if you try "My name is…," it returns the literal, but awkward translation το όνομά μου είναι for
Greek, but the idiomatic and correct translation меня зовут… for Russian. Even for big Western European
languages like French and German it returns Mon nom est… and Mein Name ist…, rather than Je m'appelle… or
Ich heiße…

Also, note that it is advertised as a "Word Translator," and doesn't even allow more than a few characters of input.
I find it particularly interesting to see the distribution of "international" words, especially those languages that do
not use a word that is almost universal across the continent.

Here are some of the most common international words and the few languages that use some other term:

"culture": only Greek, Icelandic, Welsh
"passport": only Croation, Greek, Icelandic, Slovenian
"university": only Croatian, Estonian, Finnish, Greek, Hungarian, Icelandic, Irish, Welsh
"telephone": only Finnish, Icelandic, Latvian (Welsh dros y ffôn seems to be halfway there)
"museum": only Icelandic and Welsh
"cafe": with some allowance for "coffeehouse" or some other formation based on "coffee", this is universal.
"banana": only Basque, Catalan, Spanish( which all call it some version of "platano"), and Turkish (muz, borrowed
from Persian or Arabic?)
"restaurant": only Basque, Finnish, Greek, Hungarian, Icelandic

I suspect that most of these can be attributed to language engineering, i.e. deliberately creating native words to
replace loanwords, especially in Greek, Icelandic, and Welsh, which are disproportionately represented.
3 persons have voted this message useful



MestreTites
Hexaglot
Newbie
United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 3731 days ago

5 posts - 7 votes
Speaks: Catalan*, English, Spanish, Japanese, German, French

 
 Message 7 of 9
17 January 2014 at 7:41pm | IP Logged 
This is so misleading...
1 person has voted this message useful



Indíritheach
Senior Member
United States
Joined 3805 days ago

108 posts - 146 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish, Irish, French

 
 Message 8 of 9
17 January 2014 at 10:00pm | IP Logged 
Well, I'm just glad they didn't leave out Irish! :)


2 persons have voted this message useful



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