Good Morning All! Welcome to the Saturday Lecture Series. Today’s Lecture is a very interesting one.
This lecture is about the relationships that languages in Europe have. The Lexical distance is defined as the more words that they share, the closer they are, and this is graphically represented here in this map.
Here is an excerpt of the article, please click here to read it in its entirety.
A Finn and a Spaniard walk into a bar. How do they strike up a conversation? It would be exceptional for either to speak each other’s language. And it would be rare for both to be fluent enough in French, German, Esperanto or Russian – all languages which once had the ambition to become Europe’s lingua franca.
No, that Finn and that Spaniard will talk to each other and order drinks in English, the true second language of the continent. Also, the bartender is probably Irish anyway.
Europe’s defining trait is its diversity. Europeans don’t have to travel far to immerse themselves in a different culture. And if each only spoke their own language, they wouldn’t even be able to make heads or tails of it.
Or would they?
PLEASE READ THE REST HERE as it explains each node on the map
Further reading on a similar subject
Have a great Saturday! It’s an open thread
