Infographic of the Day: The Most Influential Languages of the World

A team of scientists from MIT developed an interactive infographic, Global Network of Languages, where it gathered information about the most influential languages of the world and relations between them.

The main criteria of influence that the authors used was the number of translated works of literature, the number of Wikipedia articles, and the activity of Twitter users.

If the user presses on one of the languages on the graph, they can see a short text about it, as well as its most stable connections with the other languages.

The creators of the infographic say that one of the main ideas that their work visualises is the presence of the so-called core languages that serve as bridges for all other languages.

For instance, in order to read a text written in Quechuan language (spoken in some regions of the South America) in Estonian, it has to be first translated to Spanish, then from Spanish to English, and only after that — from English to Estonian.