How languages reveal the concepts that matter most

Languages offer a view into the lives of the people who use them, mirroring what matters to them and what they encounter every day.

It is therefore perhaps unsurprising that languages differ in the parts of vocabulary they foreground. Researchers have observed that Mongolian contains numerous horse-related terms, Māori many words for ferns, and Japanese extensive vocabulary connected with taste.

Some associations are more predictable: German has numerous beer-related words, while Fijian has many terms for fish. Linguist Paul Zinsli even devoted a whole book to Swiss German vocabulary concerning mountains.

In a study we recently published, we adopted a wide-ranging method for investigating relationships between languages and concepts.

With computational techniques, we identified vocabulary domains that are distinctive to particular languages, offering insights into linguistic and cultural diversity.

Our research contributes to the expanding understanding of language, culture and their relationship to one another.

Our approach to languages and concepts

We examined 163 language–concept associations drawn from existing research.

We assembled a digital collection of 1,574 bilingual dictionaries translating between English and 616 other languages. Because many dictionaries remained protected by copyright, we could access only the number of times a given word occurred in each dictionary.

One concept we examined was "horse". French, German, Kazakh and Mongolian were among the highest-scoring languages. In other words, their dictionaries contained comparatively large numbers of:

1. words denoting horses. For example, Mongolian аргамаг means "a good racing or riding horse";
2. terms associated with horses. For example, Mongolian чөдөрлөх means "to hobble a horse".

However, these totals may also have been affected by occurrences of "horse" in example sentences attached to unrelated entries.

Not a hoax after all?

Our results confirm most of the connections previously identified by scholars, including the observation that Hindi has many words associated with love and Japanese many relating to obligation and duty.

We were particularly keen to assess the claim that Inuit languages have many snow words. This famous assertion has been repeatedly overstated and misrepresented. Some specialists have even rejected it as the "great Eskimo vocabulary hoax", arguing that it is simply untrue.

Yet our findings indicate that Inuit snow vocabulary really is unusual. Among 616 languages, Eastern Canadian Inuktitut achieved the highest score for "snow". The two other Inuit languages in our dataset-Western Canadian Inuktitut and North Alaskan Inupiatun-also recorded high scores for "snow".

The Eastern Canadian Inuktitut dictionary in our dataset contains terms including kikalukpok, meaning "noisy walking on hard snow", and apingaut, meaning "first snow fall".

The 20 highest-ranking languages for "snow" also featured several Alaskan languages, including Ahtena, Dena'ina and Central Alaskan Yupik, alongside Japanese and Scots.

Scots has words including doon-lay, for "a heavy fall of snow", feughter, for "a sudden, slight fall of snow", and fuddum, for "snow drifting at intervals".

Our findings can be explored through the tool we created, which identifies the leading languages for a chosen concept and the leading concepts for a particular language.

Language and environment

While every language scoring highly for "snow" is spoken in a snowy area, the highest-ranked languages for "rain" did not invariably come from the wettest regions.

South Africa, for example, receives a moderate amount of rainfall, yet regional languages including Nyanja, East Taa and Shona have numerous rain-related terms. Unlike snow, rain is essential to human survival, which may explain why people continue to discuss it even when it is absent.

For East Taa speakers, rain is both comparatively scarce and highly desired. This is evident in expressions such as lábe ||núu-bâ, an "honorific form of address to thunder to bring rain", and |qába, referring to the "ritual sprinkling of water or urine to bring rain".

The tool also enables users to investigate concepts concerning perception ("smell"), emotion ("love") and cultural beliefs ("ghost").

Among the highest-scoring languages for "smell" is a group of Oceanic languages, including Marshallese. It includes terms such as jatbo, meaning "smell of damp clothing", meļļā, meaning "smell of blood", and aelel, meaning "smell of fish, lingering on hands, body, or utensils".

Before this research, little attention had been paid to smell vocabulary in the Pacific Islands.

Some caveats

Although the analysis identifies many compelling language–concept links, its findings are not always dependable and should, wherever possible, be checked against the original dictionaries.

For instance, Plautdietsch (Mennonite Low German) ranks von ("of"), den ("the") and und ("and") among its leading concepts, none of which is informative. We used Wiktionary to remove comparable words in other languages, but the method did not eliminate these frequent Plautdietsch terms.

The counts also include both dictionary definitions and material such as example sentences. Although the analysis removed words especially likely to occur in such sentences, including "woman" and "father", these terms may nevertheless have affected the results to a degree.

Above all, treating the findings uncritically risks reinforcing potentially harmful stereotypes. We therefore encourage caution and respect when using the tool. For any language, the concepts it displays provide only a rough reflection, at best, of cultures associated with that language.

Charles Kemp, Professor, School of Psychological Sciences, The University of Melbourne; Ekaterina Vylomova, Lecturer, Computing and Information Systems, The University of Melbourne; Temuulen Khishigsuren, PhD Candidate, The University of Melbourne; and Terry Regier, Professor, Language and Cognition Lab, University of California, Berkeley

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.