Indo-European cognate classes
Inspired by r/etymologymaps, I downloaded data from the Indo-European
Lexical Cognacy Database (IELex) and created cognate maps for all 207 words in their database. (Links to individual maps are at the end of this page.)
I describe the process on the details page, but there is one important caveat: In about 15% of cases, a language has more than one translation of a
particular word, and I have only displayed one (at most) in each map. I didn't apply any scientific principles to deleting lots of translations, and my
decisions may increase, decrease, or make no change to the apparent level of diversity of cognate classes.
(Update 2014-06-12: I've added the entropy value for each word onto the gif.)
If anyone wants to reblog on Tumblr, I have posted the gif here.
I've ordered the words by increasing diversity of the cognate classes, as defined by the
Shannon entropy. Each cognate class present in a map covers some
proportion pi of the languages displayed, and the Shannon entropy is then defined as the sum over all cognate classes of
-pi * ln(pi).
A map showing the language locations is here.
Below are links to individual word pages. The main page for each word has the frame from the gif above, and a table showing the word in each language
and its cognate class. The "big" pages contain large images, which show the words on the map itself (these are more fun than the tables).
Sorted by Shannon entropy
Sorted alphabetically
Posted 2014-06-11; updated 2014-06-12.
