L5 Title

APPENDIX 1 : RECAP AND REFERENCES TO VARIOUS STUDIES CARRIED OUT BY THE AUTHORS

Table 13 : Recap and references to various studies carried out by the authors

Date and name

Copyright

Internet Location

Description
3/96

L1
Funredes http://www.funredes.org/LC/L1 First language study, centred on French but also taking into account Spanish. Using AltaVista, it compares the presence of given words in English, French, and Spanish on the WWW, from a sample of 50 predetermined words which were chosen without any real linguistic methodology. This gave a very approximate result, with the English/French ratio given as 22 and French/Spanish as 2.4.
3/96

C1
Funredes http://funredes.org/LC/C1 This was the first study on culture, centred on the Francophone and Hispanic world. Comparitive measurements were taken, using AltaVista, counting the number of mentions there were of culturally representative personalities in Web space : around 500 people in 13 categories. The subjective result showed that there was a significant presence of Francophone culture, in relation to North American culture, in the domains where culture and commerce are not seen as one.
3/97

L2
Funredes http://funredes.org/LC/L2 An update to the language study which showed a weak growth of French compared to English and a strong growth of Spanish.
3/98

L3
Funredes http://funredes.org/LC/L3

An important update, presented at the "Visionarios" conference in Caracas.

    • Analysis of the limits of search engines and the relative presence of diacritical marks. Reccomendation that AltaVista no longer be used and HotBot be included.
    • The 'method of the complement of the empty set' applied to AltaVista gives an increase in the presence of languages derived from the language-finding algorithm used by AltaVista.
    • Critical evaluation of the results from the study by Alis Technologies.
French continues to increase slowly and Spanish is catching up with French.
9/98

L4
Funredes http://funredes.org/LC/L4

Important changes in the method and the gaining of exact results.

    • Takes into account all the Latin languages: French, Italian, Portugese, Rumanian and Spanish.
    • Sample defined in line with the rigorous linguistic criteria.
    • Measuring the WWW with the help of HotBot.
    • Measuring Usenet with the help of DejaNews.
    • Establishing intervals of reliability between 90% and 99%.
    • Weighting results with regards to the size of linguistic spaces.
9/98

C2
ACCT

Union Latine

Funredes
http://funredes.org/LC/C2

Second cultural study, 3 years later.

No notable difference in Francophone cultural presence. Using the same methodology, although the categories, choice and the number of personalities were improved and extended to include personalities throughout the Latin language speaking world.

    • Analysis of certain results by language and reference language
9/98

LC
  http://funredes.org/LC Web site for all language and culture studies.

10/2000

L5

Funredes
http://funredes.org/LC/L5
  • Extending the language to include German.
  • Selecting the search engines Google and Fastsearch after a detailed study. Measurements carried out on the WWW only.

  • Automated calculations with the aid of software interfacing between the selected terms, organized in a database, and the search engines.

  • Correction certain errors in the spelling of certain terms in the sample as well as omitting some others.

  • Start of systemisation of results and sketching out extrapolation curves.


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