Royal Society Open Science (Jan 2017)

Social media enhances languages differentiation: a mathematical description

  • Ignacio Vidal-Franco,
  • Jacobo Guiu-Souto,
  • Alberto P. Muñuzuri

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.170094
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 4, no. 5

Abstract

Read online

Understanding and predicting the evolution of competing languages is a topic of high interest in a world with more than 6000 languages competing in a highly connected environment. We consider a reasonable mathematical model describing a situation of competition between two languages and analyse the effect of the speakers' connectivity (i.e. social networks). Surprisingly, instead of homogenizing the system, a high degree of connectivity helps to introduce differentiation for the appropriate parameters.

Keywords