Paper 3: in preparation
On what linguistic connectivity means for societies.
Contribute
LINGACON is independent research, with no institutional budget, no external funding and no sponsor setting the agenda. Everything the project publishes (the standard, the indices, the open data and code) has been built on its own resources. Support in any of the forms below determines how much more of it there can be.
Why this research is expensive
Linguistic research of this kind has an awkward property: it means most at world scale. A study of one country tells you little, because much of the value lies in comparison: knowing that a figure for Rwanda and a figure for Japan were produced the same way. So the unit of work is the planet, and the cost scales accordingly.
What that involves in practice: acquiring national survey and census data, much of it neither free nor conveniently formatted; reconciling instruments that ask different questions under different thresholds; commissioning primary measurement where we found no usable source, as in parts of Asia, the Arab world and Latin America; building and maintaining the computational machinery behind the indices; and paying the specialists whose work the project depends on.
There is also an asymmetry. The cost of measuring a country depends more on its linguistic diversity than on its population: a nation of 14 million speaking dozens of languages needs a larger, stratified sample and more careful fieldwork than a monolingual country of 125 million. The places where data is scarcest are often the most expensive to reach.
What your support funds
Contributions go to the work itself. Concretely, these studies are designed and waiting on resources:
The United States, state by state
Measuring ALPS and connectivity for each US state separately, to show how a large federation's linguistic capacity is distributed inside its own borders, and what a single national figure conceals.
India: diversity and connectivity
One of the most linguistically diverse places on Earth. Measuring each state separately would show how that diversity relates to connectivity, inside the country and beyond it.
China: size and reach
Mandarin has more first-language speakers than any other language, yet its reach beyond China's borders is limited. The study would examine how the size of a language relates to its reach, and what that implies for global connectivity.
Keeping the data open
The data and code behind the papers are published openly. Contributions are what make that choice sustainable.
Support the research financially
We are currently setting up a donation channel, and will publish it here as soon as it is live. In the meantime, if you would like to support the project (with a one-off contribution, a standing arrangement, or by underwriting one of the studies above), write to research@lingacon.com and we will find a way that works.
Institutions and companies: sponsoring a named study, licensing data, or commissioning an assessment are described on the Partnerships page.
Contribute without money
Point us to data
Much of the world's language data sits in national censuses, ministry reports, and surveys that rarely circulate internationally. If you know of a source for your country, especially outside Europe and North America, telling us about it is a real contribution to the global dataset.
Translate and review
Survey modules need careful translation, and national estimates benefit from expert eyes on the ground. If you know your country's linguistic situation well, your review of our figures for it is genuinely valuable.
Open doors
An introduction to a statistical office, a survey programme, or a research group can be worth more than a grant. Adding one standardized question to a survey already in the field produces a national estimate at little additional cost.
Check our work
Replication, criticism, and corrections are welcome and taken seriously. The data are published to be checked, and finding an error in them is a service to the work.