Lost link to small linguistic database of words from various languages.
July 1, 2011 7:28 PM   Subscribe

Lost a bookmark to an online database of "common" vocabulary from many different languages, maintained by linguists. These were not Swadesh or extended Swadesh lists, but were a similar--the vocabulary was apparently designed to describe common experiences, like body/kinship terms, natural landscape terms, etc. It was definitely a work in progress. I think it had a blue and white design, a globe logo and an acronym in the name. Ring any bells, Metafilter linguists?
posted by Kutsuwamushi to Writing & Language (4 answers total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
Try searching for "semantic primes", maybe?
posted by lollusc at 2:26 AM on July 2, 2011


Response by poster: Thanks for the suggestion, but this website contained vocabulary, not semantic primes.

I may have found it through one of the popular language blogs, like languagehat or Languagelog, but I'm not sure.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 11:06 AM on July 2, 2011


Response by poster: That was a silly way to word that. What I meant is, the website was not organized around the theory of semantic primes or semantic primes at all. It was just lists of common words, like "mountain" or "child" with a translation. There was nothing about semantic primes at all.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 12:02 PM on July 2, 2011


Not sure if this is what you mean. It's not incredibly extensive, but there is a blue and white design and a globe logo: Freelang. (That's the page about "water"; the larger list is here.)

For numbers specifically, there is this site. Again, I'm linking you to a content page first so you can see what it's like, but here's the main page. It's just for numbers, so maybe not the same as the one you lost (although it is blue and white), but it's similar, and so it might be interesting/useful to you for whatever your purpose is anyway.

I also found this site, which is not blue and white, so it's definitely not the one you lost, but in any case you might find it helpful.
posted by jef at 7:18 PM on July 2, 2011


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