Open live version
Compare Old and Modern English
How do the word lengths of Old English and Modern English compare?
code
Histogram[{
StringLength /@
StringSplit[ExampleData[{"Text", "BeowulfOldEnglish"}]],
StringLength /@ StringSplit[ExampleData[{"Text", "BeowulfModern"}]]
},
ChartLegends -> {"Old English", "Modern"}]
how it works
This example was live-coded at the Wolfram Research booth at SXSW, March 9, 2014.
Split the original text of Beowulf into words:
oldEnglishBeowulfWords =
StringSplit[ExampleData[{"Text", "BeowulfOldEnglish"}]]
Find the lengths of the words:
oldEnglishBeowulfWordLengths = StringLength /@ oldEnglishBeowulfWords
Do the same with a modern translation of Beowulf:
modernEnglishBeowulfWordLengths =
StringLength /@ StringSplit[ExampleData[{"Text", "BeowulfModern"}]]
Compare the word lengths in a histogram. You can see that Modern English has many more short words and Old English more long words:
Histogram[{
oldEnglishBeowulfWordLengths,
modernEnglishBeowulfWordLengths
},
ChartLegends -> {"Old English", "Modern"}]