Speaker
Maria Bekker-Nielsen Dunbar
(OsloMet - Oslo Metropolitan University and Heidelberg University Hospital)
Description
We investigated two competing terms for influenza in English, Spanish, German, French, and Italian: "influenza" and "grippe" to determine what may have driven the choice in disease name under these competing options. Of the two, "grippe" is more commonly used in Indo-European languages. Using minimum edit distance (Levenshtein distance) we determined the available space in each language for an incoming disease name from a justification of if one term is too similar to words already in use, the other may be preferred. This explains partially why influenza is called what it is in the European languages considered.
| Research type | Basic research |
|---|
Primary author
Maria Bekker-Nielsen Dunbar
(OsloMet - Oslo Metropolitan University and Heidelberg University Hospital)
Co-authors
Manex Agirrezabal
(University of Copenhagen)
Tønnes Bekker-Nielsen
(University of Southern Denmark)
