Interlinguistic similarity and language death dynamics

¹ Departamento de Física Aplicada, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela E-15782 Santiago de Compostela, Spain
² Departamento de Física de Partículas, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela E-15782 Santiago de Compostela, Spain

Corresponding authors: fajmirap@usc.es angel@fpaxp1.usc.es

Received: 9 September 2004
Accepted: 18 January 2005

Abstract

We analyze the time evolution of a system of two coexisting languages (Castillian Spanish and Galician, both spoken in northwest Spain) in the framework of a model given by Abrams and Strogatz (Nature 424 (2003) 900). It is shown that, contrary to the model's initial prediction, a stable bilingual situation is possible if the languages in competition are similar enough. Similarity is described with a simple parameter, whose value can be estimated from fits of the data.