Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Computational Linguistics of Twitter Reveals the Existence of Global Superdialects | MIT Technology Review

Computational Linguistics of Twitter Reveals the Existence of Global Superdialects | MIT Technology Review

The first study of dialects on Twitter reveals global patterns that have never been observed before.

They then searched these tweets for word variations that are indicative of specific dialects. For example, the word for car in Spanish can be auto, automóvil, carro, coche, concho, or movi, with each being more common in different dialects. Different words for bra include ajustador, ajustadores, brasiel, brassiere, corpiño, portaseno, sostén, soutien, sutién, sujetador, and tallador while variations on computer include computador, computadora, microcomputador, microcomputadora, ordenador, PC, and so on.

They then plotted where in the world these different words were being used, producing a map of their distribution. This map clearly shows how different words are commonly used in certain parts of the world.

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