A linguist compares two dialects and finds that 78% of core vocabulary matches. If the corpus contains 1,200 cognates, how many do not match?

Wed, 06 May 2026 01:36:41 +0000

Title: A Linguistic Insight Reveals Shared Ancestry: How Many Core Cognates Don’t Match in This Dialect Comparison In a recent in-depth linguistic analysis, a leading dialect researcher has compared two closely related dialects and discovered that 78% of core vocabulary matches. This finding shines a light on their close genetic relationship and shared historical roots. But beyond the headline statistic, an important calculation reveals how many core words do not align—offering deeper insight into linguistic divergence. According to the study, the researchers analyzed a corpus of 1,200 shared cognates—words inherited from a common ancestral language and preserved across both dialects. With 78% matching, the number of non-matching cognates immediately becomes a key point of interest. To calculate the non-matching words:
78% of 1,200 = 0.78 × 1,200 = 936 matching words
Thus, the remaining words do not match:
1,200 – 936 = 264 words