Talk:Lexical similarity
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[edit] Code for Sardinian
This table is really interesting. Is there any source that we can add? Also, why is sard used as a code for Sardinian when srd exists as the proper ISO/DIS 639-3? GringoInChile 10:49, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
- Other than Ethnologue I couldn't find any reliable source. I'm sure there must be, I just wasn't lucky.
- The problem with Sardinian is that the numbers for the lexical similarity do not specify to which Sardinian dialect they refer. Ethnologue lists four such dialects [1], mentioning that they are quite distinct. The info about "Sardinian" similarity with other Romance languages comes from here:
- Logudorese is quite different from other Sardinian varieties. Lexical similarity 68% with Standard Italian, 73% with Sassarese and Cagliare, 70% with Gallurese. 'Sardinian' has 85% lexical similarity with Italian, 80% with French, 78% with Portuguese, 76% with Spanish, 74% with Rumanian and Rheto-Romance.
- As you can see, nothing clear. One more reason to find the original source of all these numbers. The other important reason is to find out exactly how the coefficients were calculated. — AdiJapan ☎ 11:41, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Question about English and Spanish
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)
[edit] Dialects above 85%
hey, where'd this come from? Hence, wouldn't French be a dialect of Italian?Domsta333 14:17, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
- 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)
[edit] Similarity?
The article does not explain how the "similarity" between two given words is defined. FilipeS 22:36, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Spanish and Italian
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)
[edit] Catalan and French
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 [2], 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)
