Lord Of The Strings Part 1 - Running the Query
(Page 5 of 5 )
Given that we stored the total number of rows in a variable, it is now quite easy to run a query to express the word counts as a percentage of the total number of words. The query rounds the percentages to the nearest number to one decimal place.
mysql
> select lang as language, round(100*count(word)/@total,1) as percent
from words group by lang;
+-----------+---------+
| language | percent |
+-----------+---------+
| DANISH | 1.9 |
| DUTCH | 13.3 |
| ENGLISH | 4.2 |
| FINNISH | 21.4 |
| FRENCH | 10.3 |
| GERMAN | 11.9 |
| HUNGARIAN | 1.3 |
| JAPANESE | 8.6 |
| LATIN | 5.7 |
| NORWEGIAN | 4.6 |
| POLISH | 8.1 |
| SPANISH | 6.4 |
| SWAHILI | 1.4 |
| SWEDISH | 0.9 |
| TOLKIEN | 0.0 |
+-----------+---------+
15 rows in set (3.56 sec)
By converting the output of this query to a comma-separated values file, and then loading it into Microsoft Excel, we can generate the following pie chart:
It is important that we understand how well represented the different languages are in the set of word lists, as this will affect our interpretation of the results of the lexical similarity analysis. Clearly
Finnish is well represented in our word lists, as are Dutch, French and German. With Finnish having the largest number of words, we have a good starting point for testing the belief that Finnish was the biggest influence on Tolkien’s languages of Middle Earth.
In my next article, I will explain the algorithm that I used to analyze the word lists, present an overview of the Java source code, and reveal the language that, according to my findings, most influenced Tolkien.
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