#language influence

The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis: Exploring the Linguistic Relativity of Thought and Perception The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, also known as linguistic relativity, suggests that the structure and content of a language significantly influence the way its speakers perceive and think about the world. This controversial hypothesis has sparked intense debates and captivated the attention of linguists,…

A recent academic paper looks at a new exciting measure of global influence of languages. 

Languages vary enormously in global importance because of historical, demographic, political, and technological forces. However, beyond simple measures of population and economic power, there has been no rigorous quantitative way to define the global influence of languages. Here we use the structure of the networks connecting multilingual speakers and translated texts, as expressed in book translations, multiple language editions of Wikipedia, and Twitter, to provide a concept of language importance that goes beyond simple economic or demographic measures.

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In this paper, we used network science to offer a previously unidentified characterization of a language’s global importance. The GLNs, mapped from millions of online and printed linguistic expressions, reveal that the world’s languages exhibit a hierar- chical structure dominated by a central hub, English, and a halo of intermediate hubs, which include other global languages such as German, French, and Spanish. Although languages such as Chinese, Arabic, and Hindi are immensely popular, we docu- ment an important sense in which these languages are more peripheral to the world’s network of linguistic influence. For example, the low volume of translations into Arabic, which had been identified as an obstacle to the dissemination of outside knowledge into the Arab world (14), is indicated by our book translation GLN and matched by the peripheral position of Arabic in the Twitter and Wikipedia GLNs.

So where does Poland stack up?

There are 43 million Polish speakers around the world and the GDP per capita of a Polish speaker is a respectable $20,326. More or less middle of the pack. But when we look at the specific components of language influence as measured by book translations, multiple language editions of Wikipedia, and Twitter, Polish does rather well (with the exception of Twitter).

When we look at Wikipedia articles, Polish is 9th in the world with 6.5 million edits and almost 50,000 editors (almost as many as China). 

On Twitter, however, Polish language practically does not exist. This is a shame, because Twitter, like it or not, serves as a forum for global elites.

This is consistent with other studies of the Twitter-verse, which demonstrate that among Twitter users followed by world leaders, the top performing Pole is Radosław Sikorski, who has 275,299 followers, among which 69 are world leaders. This is roughly as many as Pope Francis or Christiane Amanpour, a famous CNN journalist. Polish President, Bronisław Komorowski, is only followed by 12 world leaders. So, Polish presence on Twitter is significantly below average, especially for such a tech-savvy nation. A recent academic paper on Twitter corroborates this conclusion. 

  When it comes to book translations, Polish again places at the top, at number 10. There were over 14,000 translations from Polish and over 75,000 translations to Polish in the examined time period. 

Poland is also doing very well in terms of number of famous people on Wikipedia that are and speak Polish. In both categories, Poland is 7th in the world, behind Italy. 

All in all, this new measure of influence shows that Polish language remains globally important and influential, but Poles need to work harder on the Twitter-verse to boost our global influence in the future. On Twitter, Radek Sikorski should pave the way for other Poles on how to establish and cultivate presence that helps to elevate the importance of Poland and Polish language globally.