The Entropy of Languages

The story at the end of this entry may surprise you. Some readers might expect the term "entropy of a language" to relate somehow to its decline. In fact, the article describes a computer-generated lineage of languages that closely approximates the Indo-European language family tree. And the method the computer used to develop this lineage, analyzing the "relative entropy of two languages" will most certainly surprise you too!Economist.com | Computers and language