European word translator: an interactive map
115 comments
·February 23, 2025overflowcat
jhanschoo
Note that a very significant amount of this data on Wiktionary comes from the tireless work of a handful of contributors, and especially https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Justinrleung
kozak
Ukrainian and russian words often use the same letters but are pronounced very differently due to distinct phonetics. On the other hand, some Polish and Czech words sound the same or very similar to Ukrainian but look quite different because of their different alphabets. Therefore, phonetic transcription would be a valuable improvement.
Falimonda
I've been using phonetic transcriptions in a parallel text reader application I've been putting together. It seems like they go a long way in allowing a foreign language learner to internalize a word's pronunciation.
usr1106
The Finnish example translation is wrong: "an example" should be "esimerkki". (There are no articles in Finnish.) The map shows "esimerkiksi" which means "for example". (Prepositions are relatively rare in Finnish.)
Edit: Ah, it says the data is from Google translator. So no suprise here, Google translator produces poor results. It's said that Deepl is much better. I can't really tell because I don't need machine translation Finnish English. Both are roughly equally strong foreign languages for me.
hulium
The fine-print at the bottom of the page says "The translations were retrieved around 2014". Machine translation has come a long way since then.
Tainnor
Machine translation has come a long way since then, but Google Translate continues to be so far behind it's quite ridiculous.
encom
I've had very mixed luck with all online translation services when translating between danish and english. Google was bad to the point of being unusable, but none were great. ChatGPT however is excellent at this. It's a shame its output is so extremely slow, or it would have been perfect.
kgeist
For Slavic languages, it sometimes produces arbitrary case forms, too.
fjivnfyu
When translating between two languages with gendered nouns, it will also lose the correct gender in translation, since it goes through the intermediate step of English. It’s hilarious how inadequate it is.
carlosjobim
DeepL is leagues better than Google Translate, and I can tell because I've worked with a lot of translation to and from Finnish. They are not even comparable. Google Translate will completely garble any translation to or from Finnish. Kagi Translate also does a great job in Finnish translation.
nedt
I can mostly speak for German. It seems to mix them all into one general language. But there are a lot of local differences between north and south of Germany, Switzerland and Austria. And it’s not just dialect, but really different words that might not be understood everywhere. If you look at the english part it has at least three different words. Similar in Spanish.
wongarsu
My best guess:
- Swiss German and Austrian German didn't make the cut because Switzerland and Austria are on good terms with Germany and don't mind if we call their languages a dialect of German. Not only is that justification to exclude them, they are also not in Google translate for this reason (which this map uses)
- Luxembourg did mind and went to great lengths to get their German dialect recognized as a separate language, is in Google translate, but Wikipedia lists them as only 300k speakers
- Frisian is seen as a distinct language because of how different it is, is in Google translate, but has about 200k speakers
- Similarly, Scottish Garlic is in Google translate has only 70k-200k speakers
The map is consistent if you set the goal of only considering languages that are in Google translate and have at least 500k speakers.
I do think these rules detract from the map. Frisian and Luxembourgish are interesting as "in-between" languages (Luxemburgish has a lot of French influence, Frisian is closer related to English). And Swiss German has many distinct words that are very different from their German counterparts, so for the purposes of this map it really should be a language.
bradrn
I think for ‘Scottish Garlic’ you meant ‘Scottish Gaelic’…
mrazomor
IIUC, the Swiss German can't make a cut as there's no standard written form (and with it, not much resources), and the variations between the cities are pretty significant.
lqet
There really isn't a single "Swiss German" dialect. It is rather a family of dialects, and this family is again part of the larger family of "Alemannic German" dialects, which are spoken in most of southwestern Germany, Switzerland and western parts of Austria [0]. It is really very hard to clearly demarcate "Swiss German" from dialects spoken for example in the Black Forest, around the city of Freiburg im Breisgau, in Vorarlberg or even (historically) in Alsace. My own dialect is Swabian (also Alemannic), and I never had trouble understanding the local dialects around Basel, Berne or Zurich. It is easier for me to understand these Swiss German dialects than, for example, Bavarian dialects.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alemannic_German#/media/File:A...
FearNotDaniel
It’s hilarious that an English language website has so many enthusiasts for the regional differences of their favourite foreign languages while all pretending that English is monolithic and consistent everywhere. Try driving around the north of England for an hour or two and see how many different words for bread roll you encounter. Baps, barm cakes, oven bottom muffins…
lqet
In my experience, people mostly tend to hyperbolize the differences between their local dialect and "everything else" for patriotic reasons. Usually, they give some singular words that are vastly different as examples (I suspect you can find such examples in most languages and most regions), and ignore that 99% of the vocabulary, plus the grammar and most daily sentence constructs, are equivalent (modulo the accent). A standard example in German is how the outermost bread slice is called, which differs completely from region to region, town to town, and sometimes even family to family [0].
[0] https://www.atlas-alltagssprache.de/wp-content/uploads/2014/...
lqet
> And it’s not just dialect, but really different words that might not be understood everywhere. If you look at the english part it has at least three different words. Similar in Spanish.
I think you cannot really compare the minuscule differences between "Standard German", "Austrian Standard German", and "Swiss Standard German" to the differences between English, Irish and Welsh, which are not even from the same language family. Also, the tool is based on Google Translate, and AFAIK Google Translate doesn't differentiate between them.
Comparing the tool to this map [0], it seems to do a pretty good job in capturing all major languages in Europe, while ignoring their dialects.
But I agree that I would be great if you could zoom into the map and also show differences in local dialects. ChatGPT seems to be pretty good at translating to different variants of standard German, or German dialects [1]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Europe#/media/Fil...
[1] https://chatgpt.com/share/67bba4db-9458-800c-b5f8-fd3fa196d4...
fy20
Italy is the same. Each region has it's own variations of words, which can be very different or mean different things in other regions.
For example in Rome a grocery store bag is "busta", but in Milan it is "sachetto" with "busta" being the word they use for an envelope.
iamkonstantin
Same for Belgium, Google/Apple translate has never been able to correctly translate French and Dutch for us while our vocabulary choices are drastically different from neighbouring France and Netherlands.
gield
For people with their iDevice set to the Swiss/Austrian German or Belgian Dutch locales, Apple Translate initially didn't even offer their languages in Apple Translate (i.e. not even German or Dutch). Only after internal complaining did they allow Swiss/Austrian German users to use German in Apple Translate.
ttepasse
For an example take a look at this map of the different words used in German for "meatballs":
lentil_soup
The Spain map is not showing Spanish only, those are separate languages spoken in Spain
layer8
One-to-one word translation doesn’t make too much sense, because words tend to have more than one meaning, and they don’t map 1:1 between languages, both in meaning and usage. For example, “nice” is translated here into words that would (depending on language and context) more commonly translate back to “beautiful”, “pleasant”, “good”, or “fun”. They aren’t necessarily wrong as translations, but the website’s premise of “word A in language X is equivalent to word B in language Y” is.
imhoguy
You can put phrase, e.g. https://ukdataexplorer.com/european-translator/?word=glass+o...
reader9274
You immediately see the difference (or similarly) of languages when using words that are very old, such as "iron", or "stone", which are words that have existed from the origins of that language.
null
lqet
Also "cow". And "sun", "mama" and "papa" seem to transcended most European languages.
adrian_b
For some words, their identity is not obvious when you do not know the rules for the changes of sounds between the Indo-European language subfamilies.
For instance "cow" and "Kuh" come from the same word as "boeuf" and "buey" (also despite the gender difference).
svilen_dobrev
salt, tea, ..
one can follow migrations.. and criss-crosses..
btw, "orange" as color in Bulgarian is still "orange" (оранжев/а/о/и), but "orange" as fruit is портокал ("portokal") - so that's tricky..
"oranges" seems more correct, vs "orange color" maybe
wongarsu
Poland took issue with the story that worldwide there are only two words for tee, and which one you use depends on whether you got introduced to tea via sea or via land
adrian_b
Salt and tea are good examples for the 2 reasons that can be the cause for finding the same word in many languages.
Salt is an ancient Indo-European word that was already in use several millennia ago, so it has been inherited in most Indo-European languages.
Tea is a relatively recent borrowing in the European languages, which has spread from one language to another, with a few pronunciation variants, across all Europe, regardless of the genetic relationships between languages.
retrac
Mama and papa is a whole other phenomenon.
Arabic: mama babi. Mandarin: mama baba. Swahili: mama baba. Inuktitut: anaana ataata. English: mama papa. Tamil: amma appa.
These languages are not known to be related.
The first vowel sound a child makes is approximately "a" and the first consonant they form tends to be a nasal plosive "mba mba mba" and the second distinct sound tends to be a dental or labial plosive "pa ta pa ta". And the first thing a baby says is "mommy" of course and the second thing a baby says is "daddy" of course. So mama is mommy and papa or tata is daddy. That's the usual explanation, anyway.
oguz-ismail
> Inuktitut: anaana ataata
That's interesting. Ana/ata means mother/father in Turkic languages
sschueller
Here is an interactive card of how Swiss people (Only the German speaking part) call the left over piece of an Apple: https://www.kleinersprachatlas.ch/interaktive_karten/F15_Apf...
Here some other words as well: https://www.kleinersprachatlas.ch/karte-1-butter
jhoechtl
In lower Austria we would call this a "Burzen" -> Apfelburzen. But this is colloquial and somewhat outdated.
zkid18
my favorite example of trade routes influenced the spread of a word is "tea". the word for “tea” comes from either a variation of “cha” or a variation of “te,” reflecting distinct dialect pronunciations in China.
countries receiving tea overland (e.g., via the Silk Road) adopted forms of “cha,” while those trading by sea through Fujian ports adopted forms of “te.”
The project visualise perfectly this distinction.
darkwater
Not doubting about this but then, how come that Portuguese uses the "chai" version, being on the extreme west of Europe, and with all the other countries in between Portugal and the end of the Silk Road using "te"? Not to mention the fact that Portuguese were a naval power for many years, with colonies in Asia as well.
zkid18
Good question, Portuguese traded not through Fujian but Macao, where chá is used.
The term cha (茶) is “Sinitic,” meaning it is common to many varieties of Chinese dialects. Meanwhile, the word tea comes from the Min Nan variety of Chinese, spoken in the coastal Fujian province, where the character 茶 is pronounced te.
fjivnfyu
Russia got it from Mongolia, so it uses the “chai” variation. Move just a tiny bit West though and Poland got it from France, which got it via sea routes, therefore Poland uses the “te” variation, even though a lot of the culture of drinking tea in Poland has been influenced by Russia, with boiled tea being a thing in more eastern parts, and variations on that with citruses and honey being very popular (even becoming more popular today). Curiously, contrary to the word for tea, Polish word for kettle borrows from Russian influence – “czajnik”, where the first syllable comes obviously from “chai”.
enriquto
Love that the numbers in Catalan are represented as numerals, not as words.
EDIT: playing with it, it's a bit sad that large numbers do not work at all (in any language); and that not all common forms of a word are shown. For example, I tried to see how "ninety six" is said in french in France, Belgium and Switzerland, but it does not work.
BrandoElFollito
As a French, I always found that the way Wallons or Swiss word out numbers >69 makes way more sense than ours
OptionOfT
Growing in Belgium, we learned that our Walloon brethren use septante (70), quatre-vingts (4 * 20 or 80) and nonante (90).
We never learned huitante (80), but here are apparently parts of Belgium that use is. We did learn soixante-dix and quatre-vingts-dix, and were allowed to use both. [0]
The Swiss also use huitante, and Nova Scotia uses octante.
[0]: Funnily enough, writing American English was a no-go. We had to write centre, colour, metre, lift (elevator), ticket (receipt).
BrandoElFollito
Ha, I only knew of octante, I dd not know there was a "huitante". I worked at CERN and it was octante.
tarkin2
I often wondered if the fact your number system forces you to multiply somehow affects your mathematical competence. France has won a lot of Fields medals.
BrandoElFollito
No, because nobody thinks 4*20+16 when saying 96, this is just a string in your head, without any links to 4, 20, 16. This is just a word like "ghdtehbdf"
wongarsu
The English number system kind of also forces you to multiply. Ninety-six is nine tens plus six, or 9*10+6. French is just special because they randomly sneak in base 20. But I doubt they really think more about saying 4 score plus sixteen then you do about saying nine tens plus six.
What is more influential (in a detrimental way) is German randomly switching reading direction. They read 2196 as 2000+100+6+90 instead of the more reasonable 2000+100+90+6
Detrytus
I once read an article claiming ghat Chinese are do good at math for two reasons:
1. Their words for Numbers are based on Base-10 system (so no nonsense such as „eleven” and „twelve”)
2. Their words for Numbers are short, one syllabe, so they can keep morę of them in their short term memory at once
Not saying there’s any truth to that, but sounds interesting
moogly
We can test your theory by checking how the Danes fared.
https://blogs.transparent.com/language-news/2016/08/29/danis...
watwut
As a no French, I love French numbers you dislike. 90 being 4 20 10 is something sort of awesome and funny.
benregenspan
This is very cool. Also, it seems like Romanian is the only language where the word for turtle translates literally to "shelled frog".
cantaloupe
German’s Schildkröte, “shield-toad”, is quite similar.
neontomo
Sköldpadda - Swedish too
null
joshdavham
I love when languages have funny words like that.
Like how in Japanese, "mushroom" can roughly be translates as "tree child".
nakedneuron
Hedgehog is literally "needle-mouse" (hari-nezumi).
dreijs
In Dutch, a porcupine is called a "spike-pig" (stekelvarken)
Edit: and a turtle is also a "shield-toad" (schildpad)
shantara
Similarly, in many Slavic languages the bat could be translated as “flying mouse”.
DonaldFisk
There are examples from five language families shown here: Indo-European, Basque, Uralic, Turkic, and Afro-Asiatic.
The words for bridge split neatly into language subfamilies. The only exception appears to be Welsh.
riffraff
The Hungarian translation of "en example" is incorrect, the translation there would be "as an example" or "for example".
"Egy példa" would be more literal.
Wiktionary has dialect maps for common Chinese vocabulary that showcases the differences in terminology across various regions of Chinese, rather than their similarities. Example: sleep -> https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Template:zh-dial-map/%E7%9D%A... , hide-and-seek -> https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Template:zh-dial-map/%E6%8D%8...
p.s. I'm saying this because most of these terms that has a dial-map are common in daily conversation. The differences in written Chinese vocabulary aren't as significant; how scientific and technical terms are expressed is largely determined by your administrative region.