Comparing Swadesh lists

8 May

As an experiment, we put together Swadesh lists of seven languages: Shaetlan, Scots, English, Nynorsk Norwegian, Bokmål Norwegian, Swedish and Dutch. Our colleagues at Aarhus University then ran this data through a phylogenetic network. The results show that (1) Shaetlan is more distant from both Scots and English than Swedish is from the two Norwegians; (2) Scots and English are closer to each other than Shaetlan is to either of them; (3) Scots and English show more influence between each other than with Shaetlan.

This neatly illustrates that "Language is a dialect with an army and a navy" (see our post on 5 January 2022): Swedish and the two Norwegians cluster very closely together, and are considered separate languages. Yet Shaetlan, which is quite removed from both Scots and English, keeps being referred to as a "dialect" despite what the linguistic data shows.

With many thanks to Associate Prof. Dr Peter Bakker and his assistants Móeiður Vigfúsdóttir, Cecile Meilby Jensen, Teis Lykke Tambjerg & Anna Damgaard Hansen, Aarhus University, for providing us with this graph.

PS:

For good overviews on Quantitative comparative linguistics, Swadesh lists and Phylogenetic networks, see the respective Wiki articles with further references:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_comparative_linguistics

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swadesh_list

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phylogenetic_network

References

English: fixed list & native speaker knowledge (Viveka Velupillai)

Scots: Robinson, Mairi. 1985. The concise Scots dictionary. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press.

Shaetlan: native speaker knowledge (Ronnie Eunson)

Nynorsk Norwegian: Nynorskordboka. 2023 Språkrådet og Universitetet i Bergen. Available at: http://ordbøkene.no (last access 27 March 2023).

Bokmål Norwegian: Bokmålsordboka. 2023 Språkrådet og Universitetet i Bergen. Available at: http://ordbøkene.no (last access 27 March 2023).

Swedish: native speaker knowledge (Viveka Velupillai)

Dutch: native speaker knowledge (Hilly van der Sluis)