In Every Language.

Our take

Dive into "In Every Language," a captivating project by Riley Walz that curates the fascinating visual world of Wikipedia across different languages. This collection showcases images chosen to illustrate concepts like "house" and "street," revealing the delightful diversity in how cultures represent shared ideas. Refresh the page to discover a new perspective each time, as you explore the intersection of language and imagery. It's an engaging way to see how different cultures interpret the same concepts, urging you to think about the nuances of communication.

This is via MeFi, and I’m just going to reproduce growabrain’s wording there because I can’t improve on it:

In Every Language collects images that different language versions of Wikipedia use to illustrate concepts. Refresh to see more.

It was created by Riley Walz. (wiki)

A couple to get you started: house, street. It’s interesting to see which articles use images from their own culture and which fetch them from elsewhere (e.g., the Japanese “street” image shows Wall Street).

Oh, and when I clicked on the Persian “street” article I chose the Google Translate option, and I thought I’d reproduce what it did with the etymology section:

Theology of the word

The word street is two parts of Khi and Aban Persian. The word “Khi” is one of the roots of two Persian words, chid and musk. ۳]

The word “wrough” in Middle Persian is (*xīg, *xēg, leather bag) of Mazandarani (xek). With the old Scandinavian kagi (Bashkeh) the doppelganger. And the word “worn” is from the root of the word Persian pig. ۴]

Read on the original site

Open the publisher's page for the full experience

View original article →

Tagged with

#creative language use#language evolution#philosophy of language#humor in language#word meaning#placeholder words#internet culture#In Every Language#Wikipedia#Riley Walz#images#concepts#language versions#culture#house#street#Persian#concept illustration#articles#etymology