Talk:Lexical similarity

message: Does a dash on the table mean there is no lexical similarity between the languages? I can think of a couple dozen words between Spanish and English that are similar - things like "interesante" (interesting), "rata" (rat) and "tren" (train) - even one or two very common words like "no" (no) and "es" (is). Apparently I've misunderstood the concept of lexical similarity - why does the table report zero similarity? --203.206.56.201 10:56, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The dash means "data not available". — AdiJapan ☎ 10:36, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Question about English and Spanish

message: hey,
where'd this come from?
Hence, wouldn't French be a dialect of Italian?Domsta333 14:17, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It came from this page at Ethnologue (lower half of the page): "Percentages higher than 85% usually indicate a speech variant that is likely a dialect of the language being compared." So it is a question of likelyhood, not certainty. Besides the concept of dialect doesn't have a clear-cut, linguistic-only, definition. France and Italy both have armies, that's why they are not just dialects... — AdiJapan ☎ 10:36, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Lexical similarities higher than 85% indicate that the speech variant that is likely a dialect, this does not mean that 100% of the time two languages with a lexical similarity of 85%+ are dialects. French and Italian both have countries in which their languages are official languages (which by some very unscientific definitions of a dialect can make them languages), and they have serious phonological differences that make mutual intelligibility difficult (at least in spoken form). Some dialect continuum has been suggested to exist between French and Italian (speakers in Southern France can sometimes partially understand Italian for example), but the standard froms in Paris and Rome are very different.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Brianc26 (talk • contribs) 03:59, 9 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dialects above 85% 

message: The article does not explain how the "similarity" between two given words is defined. FilipeS 22:36, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It is sort of straightforward (two words that look/sound similar and have similar meanings, and sometimes similar words might not look immediatly similar without a background in Historical Linguistics), but here are some examples of them from German vs English (60% lexical similarity):
English:    German:
similar words:
the man            der Mann
to begin           beginnen
Winter             Winter
Psychology         Psychologie
(the) Probability  die Probabilität*
* A word for probability in German which is not a loanword is "die Wahrscheinlichkeit".
Similar, but not so obvious
old                alt
elder**            älter 
thou**             du
the rain           der Regen
The water          das Wasser    
to fly             fliegen
to sail            segeln
the gift           die Gabe**
and                und
to greet           begrüßen
the friend         der Freund/die Freundin (male/female)
friendship         die Freundschaft
the ship           das Schiff
the apple          der Apfel
the housemaid      das Hausmädchen
the cow            die Kuh
Bavaria            Bayern
**=archaic
Words which have changed in meaning over time and are now not lexically similar even though they are technically in cognate with each other:
the little girl    das Mädchen=little girl (cognate with "maiden", has a variety as "maid" in modern English)
the dog            der Hund (cognate with "hound")
Dissimilar words:
to buy             kaufen
to sell            verkaufen
the seller         der Verkaüfer/die Verkaüferin (male/female)
to breathe         atmen
the sale           die Einkaüfungsgelegenheit
(as in a sale at a store)
Brianc26 (talk) 04:30, 9 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Similarity? 

message: According to the table, spanish has a lower lexical similarity with italian than french. I´d like to point out the importance of the spoken language, this is it, the phonetic patterns, I´m spanish and I have no statistic researchs, please note that the differences between the written written and the spoken issues are extremmely important, but I´d say Spanish and Italian, as a hole, have a higher level of similarity each other than with french.--85.85.2.194 10:15, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Spanish and Italian 

message: In the table of lexical similarity values there is no value for Catalan-French. I'm catalan native speaker and I can understand some spoken words in french and so much readed words. And some words are identically. For example "D'acord" (OK) the negation "pas" that are identical or   "parlar" (cat), "parler" (fra) that are really similar, also with italian "parlare".
So I think that there must be a mistake. Catalan and French have a similarity value.  —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 83.46.214.146 (talk) 17:16, August 23, 2007 (UTC) 
:It's not a mistake, the hyphens in the table don't mean zero, but "data not available". The table contains only data that have been published by Ethnologue.com. For the Catalan there are several lexical similarity values , but none of them is with French, so even if there is a high lexical similarity between Catalan and French we don't know what number to put in the table. If you find any publication that indicates that degree of lexical similarity, please feel free to put it in the table. Don't forget to add your source in the reference section. — AdiJapan ☎ 03:43, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You are wrong! "d'accord" has two c's in French. --2.245.92.86 (talk) 16:06, 19 March 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Catalan and French 

message: Regarding the table used here, I'd like to make two points.
*The table is very unbalanced at the moment, consistigt of eight Romance languages, only two Germanic languages and a single Slavic languages. I would suggest removing some of the smaller Romance languages, perhaps Sardu and Romansh, and add at least a few more Germanic languages (Dutch and Swedish) and Slavic (Polish, Czech, Croatian).
*I know I'm stepping on some toes now, but Ethnologue is not a reliable source. Apart from usually getting its facts wrong, at least in Europe, it is at best a secondary source. It would increase the reliability of the table quite a lot if primary sources would be used. JdeJ (talk) 20:55, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Reliability and comparability

message: First I'd remind all editors that Ethnologue is not an infallible source. Indeed, it is most fallible. It is not a reliable source of information beyond the most general, i.e. that which they cannot possibly get wrong. 60% lexical similarity between English and German? I find that an incredible thing to believe given English contains only 24% Germanic vocabulary, and within this 24%, I would venture to guess that similarities with equivalent German words are not near the 100% threshold either. Utter spurious rubbish.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.59.250.129 (talk) 15:17, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: This article is filled with poppycock

message: The ethnologue figures seem to be way off mark, especially when comparing English to French and German which are given two widely differing coefficients. In English, if you write any formal or business letter, or any text relating to culture or law the lexical similarity with French is likely to be very high, and that with German will be much lower. The inverse is true writing informal texts about everyday life, and with functional words. The reason for this is likely cultural. Modern English was borne out of the hundred years war with France, when there was a need for the Norman ruling classes, who spoke French, to talk with the peasantry who spoke early English, which was nordic Germanic. Look at the Lords Prayer written in Old English, Shetland Norn and Icelandic, they are all pretty similar. Strange how the Brythonic languages had very little influence on English. 
Look at these animals and meats and their cognates
Cow, Beef  - Kuh, Rindfleisch (D) - Vache, Beoef (FR)
Calf, Veal - Kalb, Kalbfleisch (D) - Veau, Veau
Swine (Pig), Pork  - Schwein, Schweinfleisch (D) - Cochon, Porc (FR)
Sheep, Mutton - Schaf, Hammelfleisch  (D) - Mouton, Mouton 
Lamb, Agnew (archaic)- Lamm, Lammfleisch  (D) - Agneau, Agneau (FR)
What is interesting is that the animals are cognate with the german equivalents (and what the peasants called them), and the meats are cognate with the french equivalents (and what the cooks and the aristocrats saw).
These differences persist today in terms of class attitudes, and what is perceived to be formal and proper, and informal and vulgar. French based language is largely seen as more formal.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jroswald2001 (talk • contribs) 00:25, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: English compared to German and French

message: It's impossible to accept that according to Ethnologue German is closer to French than English is. Even for basic words, there have obviously been things that they must have missed as cognate words originating directly from french or latin. In the past and current sentences (sentence is derived from french) there are 18 words originating directly from French, and 24 directly from german. So the 27% and 60 % similarities to French and German, respectively, are even questionable too.
E.g. 
     EN table - FR table - DE Tisch
     EN rock - FR roc/rocher - DE Fels  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.205.227.110 (talk) 14:31, 5 August 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  English and French 

message: The Russian portion of the table is wrong. It reads differently horizontally and vertically (which ought to be the same). And where are there 2 "1"s for Portuguese? Someone fix this table! 219.74.168.174 (talk) 20:17, 5 September 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Something wrong with the table

message: The 27% lexical similarity between English and French is simply wrong, especially the fact that it is at 29% between German and French.
Newer research puts this figure between 30-49% - the authors would have the exact figure.
Check out this page
http://elms.wordpress.com/
The data used for the research comes from
Шайкевич А. Я., Гипотезы о естественных классах и возможность количественной таксономии в лингвистике, в кн.: Гипотеза в современной лингвистике, М., 1980;
In any case, they obviously place English as closer to French than as German is.
They also say that 75% of the english vocabulary comes from French.
:46% here as well 178.221.85.71 (talk) 16:21, 26 December 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  English and French: New Research 

message: Can someone elaborate how lexical similarity is calculated? Is a random sample of words taken, a fixed well-constructed list, or all words (including archaic and scientific ones)? How far can the meaning of cognates deviate? For example German Herberge "shelter, lodgings" and English harbour "shelter for ships, port" - would they be counter for or against lexical similarity? How far can the form of words deviate? For example Afrikaans "aand" has the same origin and meaning as English "evening", though only linguists will see this similarity. Morgengave (talk) 12:24, 27 October 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: There are different ways. I don't think random sample is ever used. I read papers where most frequent words were used. The other way is to compare whole dictionaries. As for the second part of the question, I think you cannot mix archaic words with modern ones.. Archaic have their use in etymology studies. You can use synonyms and contextual synonyms. 178.221.85.71 (talk) 16:19, 26 December 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Calculation method

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