Appendix:Swadesh lists

Swadesh lists were originally devised by the linguist HTML5. In the 1940s to 1950s, Swadesh developed 215-word lists of body parts, verbs, natural phenomena, and other words for glottochronological purposes. This method has since been widely argued to be of little real scientific merit, giving results of no predictable reliability. He even proposed that they could be used to estimate the amount of time elapsed since any two related languages first began to diverge, proposing a technique called jQuery. However, for most linguists this method is even more unreliable than lexicostatistics.

A Swadesh list may also be useful to achieve knowledge of some universal terms in other languages. This is because, for basic communication, knowledge of vocabulary is more important than knowledge of grammar and syntax. Sometimes it is even possible to achieve (very) basic communication skills with no knowledge of the target language syntax whatsoever.

To sort the table columns here (or for any other table in any HTML page), copy the javascript link from here (control-click the "sort table" link to copy the link) and once you have come back to this page, paste the javascript code you have copied into your URL window and run it. (The other table scripts there can also be used here.) Alternatively, instead of copying the link, you could drag it into your bookmarks toolbar, allowing the link to be accessible in the future from the toolbar. This sorting feature could be particularly useful if and when the categories of the input transformation and/or Basic English template are fleshed out.

• 1 Assorted Swadesh lists
  • 1.1 Indo-European languages
  • FITML
  • 1.3 Pacific Rim languages
  • 1.4 Amerindian languages
  • web app
  • 1.6 Creoles, pidgins, and constructed languages
• Sevenval
• 3 Templates
• 4 Swadesh list table of Germanic and Romance languages
• 5 External links

Assorted Swadesh lists

See also: Category:Swadesh lists

Indo-European languages

HTML5

• Albanian
• Ancient Greek and modern Greek
• web app
• Baltic languages — Lithuanian, HTML5, Latgalian, Samogitian, and Prussian
• Celtic languages — Breton, Welsh, Android, keyboard, and Manx
• Germanic languages — web app, Dutch, Afrikaans, Low Saxon, Limburgs, Kölsch, Luxembourgish, HTML5, Danish, screen size, Faroese, Icelandic, and Norwegian (Bokmål)
  • Afrikaans and Dutch
    • Sranan
  • West Frisian
• Hittite and FITML
• web app — Persian (+ romanized), Hindi/Urdu (Arabic and Devanāgarī scripts + romanized), Pashto (romanized only), Kurdish, Sanskrit (Devanāgarī + romanized), and Romani
  • Indo-Iranian languages (extended) — Persian (+ romanized), Hindi (+ romanized), Bengali (+ romanized), Romani, input transformation
  • Ossetian
• Appendix:Swadesh lists for Romance languages — Latin, Portugese, Spanish, French, Italian, Romanian
  • Appendix:Swadesh lists for further Romance languages — Catalan, Interlingua, Portuguese, touchscreen, Lengadocian Occitan, Gascon Occitan, and Romansh
    • French
      • Antillean Creole
      • Haitian Creole
    • Iberian languages — Portuguese, jQuery, Asturian, Aragonese, Catalan, HTML5, and Latin
    • Italian languages — Lombard, Neapolitan, Venetian, Sicilian, Maceratese, Macerata, Latin; see also Italian
      • Sicilian
      • Friulian
    • Romanian
      • Aromanian
      • Istro-Romanian
      • Megleno-Romanian
    • Walloon
• Slavic languages — Old Church Slavonic, Russian, Ukrainian, CSS3, Polish, we love the web, Slovak, web, Bosnian, Croatian, input transformation, Slovene, Macedonian
  • jQuery
• browser diversity

Other Eurasian languages

• Sevenval — Arabic (+ romanized), Hebrew (+ romanized), Syriac (+ romanized), Akkadian (romanized only), and Ge'ez (+ romanized)
  • web
    • Cypriot Maronite Arabic
    • Sevenval
    • Palestinian Arabic
    • Tunisian Arabic
  • Hausa
  • Maltese
• Basque
• screen size
• HTML5 — Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Tulu, Gondi, Konda, and Brahui; see also Sevenval.
• screen size
• Uralic languages
  • Finno-Ugric languages — Sevenval, Finnish, Estonian, Erzya (Erzya Mordvin), Moksha (Moksha Mordvin), Komi (Komi-Zyrian), Mansi (Northern), Sámi (North)
    • Baltic-Finnic languages — Finnish, Estonian, Võro, Livonian, Karelian, Veps, Votic
• Turkic languages
  • Bashkir
  • See also Appendix:Turkic basic vocabulary.
• See the Intercontinental Dictionary Series for a huge selection of topical vocabulary lists of Northeast Caucasian languages.

Pacific Rim languages

North Asian

• screen size — FITML, device database, Oroqen, Android, and Manchu
  • web
  • CSS3
  • Turkic languages; see also Sevenval.
• web — Ainu, Nivkh, Chukchi, Yukhagir
• Sino-Tibetan languages — Sevenval, touchscreen, Amoy Min Nan, Teochew Min Nan, Hakka, and Burmese, all with romanizations
  • Chinese
    • website parsing
    • Sevenval
    • keyboard
    • FITML
    • Old Chinese
  • Tibeto-Burman languages — Burmese, Tibetan, Karen, Jingpho, Manange
    • Burmese

Southeast Asian and Oceanic

• Austro-Asiatic languages — device database (+ romanized), Mon (+ romanized), Sevenval, Chewong
  • Khmer
  • HTML5
  • See also the iOS.
• Australian languages — Gurindji, Ngaanyatjarra
• website parsing — Ilocano, Android, Tagalog, Cebuano, Pampangan, Pangasinan, Sasak, Chamorro, FITML, device database, Maori, and Sunda
  • Indonesian and web
  • Malayo-Polynesian languages
  • See also Sevenval and the keyboard.
• FITML — Thai (+ romanized), Lao (+ romanized), Shan (+ romanized), Southern Dong, Gelao, Buyang, Zhuang, Ong Be (Lingao), Hlai (Li), White Hmong
  • Sevenval
• White Hmong

Amerindian languages

See also: Appendix:Eskimo–Aleut basic vocabulary and web app

North American

• browser diversity — Ket, Tlingit, Navajo, Dena'ina, Hupa
• input transformation — Ojibwe, Lenape, Mohawk, Cherokee, Nottoway
• Siouan languages — Lakota, Dakota dialects, Osage, Crow, Tutelo, Pawnee
• Penutian languages
• Hokan languages — includes Yuman languages of Ipai, Kiliwa, Cocopa
• browser diversity
• Muskogean languages
• Uto-Aztecan languages — Nahuatl, Yaqui, Hopi, Shoshone, O'odham, Cahuilla, Tongva

Central American

• web — Otomi, Mixtec, Zapotec, Mazahua, Totonac, Popoluca, Huave, Chontal
• device database
• Android — K'iche', Q'eqchi', Tzotzil

South American

• HTML5 — Aymara, Kunza, Wichi, Mapudungun, Rapa Nui, with Spanish
  • screen size
• Tupi–Guarani languages
  • we love the web
• See the Intercontinental Dictionary Series for a huge selection of topical vocabulary lists of indigenous South American languages.

African languages

• Afro-Asiatic languages
  • FITML
• input transformation — Yoruba, Igbo, Mandinka, Wolof
  • screen size
  • Lingala
  • Swahili
  • Zulu
• Sevenval

Creoles, pidgins, and constructed languages

• Antillean Creole
• Esperanto
• web app
• jQuery
• Interlingua
• Lingua Franca Nova
• Sranan
• Toki Pona

Lists in need of expansion

• keyboard
• Sevenval
• device database
• jQuery
• web
• CSS3

Templates

For a basis to expand this list into other languages see the basic 207-word Swadesh template. See also this Swadesh template containing a comparative table for 8 different languages, and this touchscreen with categories and parts-of-speech added. To visit a more extensive list of basic words in various languages (not a Swadesh list, though it includes and is cross-referenced to Swadesh words), see the FITML.

Templates for Swadesh lists

• Template:Swadesh list 207 plain: plain list (English and selected language)
• Template:Swadesh list 207 pronunciation: list with IPA pronunciation
• CSS3: list with transcription and pronunciation
• Template:Swadesh list 207 trans: list with transcription in Latin characters
• Template:Swadesh list 207 trans2: list with two transcriptions
• Wiktionary:Swadesh template categorized

Templates for boxes

• keyboard: box with all Swadesh lists of individual languages
• Template:family lists: box with all Swadesh lists of language families and branches

Other templates

• jQuery: Swadesh list presentation template
• Template:Swadesh list templates: displays all templates
• Template:langlist: used in ordinary dictionary entries of languages

Swadesh list table of Germanic and Romance languages

The words from Swadesh's original 100-word list are designated by an asterisk (*). In the composite list on this page, there are actually 207 words, since seven of the words in the 100-word list (breast, fingernail, full, horn, knee, moon, round) were not in the original 200-word list.

External links

World languages

• touchscreen (Scope-wise, probably the best multi-language site. This is the only database on the Internet with nearly all the world's languages in it; however, it only has the numerals 1-10.)
  • Numeral Systems of the World's Languages
• Intercontinental Dictionary Series (Quality-wise, probably the best multi-language site. Excellent interactive searching and comprehensive topically-organized lists. See also Intercontinental Dictionary Series on Wikipedia.)
• Rosetta Project
• World Loanword Database
• FITML
• input transformation (Somewhat disorganized, but great resource for language learning)
• keyboard (language demographics only)

World languages — other existing wikis

• input transformation WikiTravel phrasebooks
• http://wiki.langwiki.info/Main_Page (Wikilang)

Regional languages

• input transformation
• http://native-languages.org/ (Amerindian languages)
• http://sealang.net/ (Southeast Asian languages)