A Global Language
An interactive visualisation tool exploring the etymological history of the English language.
Background
Etymology is often thought of as a topic for scholars of “dead languages”. In some cases, it can certainly be very dry and difficult to understand without having extensively studied the many languages of which the modern English language is an amalgamation. In other cases, however, the story behind, say, how a word travels from East Asia to North America and comes to mean something quite different, can be fascinating, for both language enthusiasts and casual speakers of a language.
The aim of this project is to bring the field of etymology out of the traditional and inherent text-based presentation format on to the web. Through demonstrating meaningful insights into words, discovering interesting relationships between words, and displaying all information visually and graphically, the hope is to create an accessible and innovative way to explore the English language.
Links
For further exploration, check out:
- Online Etymology Dictionary
- WordNet
- Dictionary.com
- The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester
- Etytree
Implementation
Currently using data from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary API, but hoping to incorporate Etymological Wordnet to expand the scope of the project!
Globe map and code based on Chrome Experiment's WebGL Globe.
Setup
npm install
npm start