ENGINES OF AMERICA · NO. 08 · THE LANGUAGE ENGINE
The Language Engine
The words remember what the books forgot.
Running nowv1.0 AlphaFree
Our names and words echo across the old world: Amaru and Amurru, Sindhu and the Indies. The Language Engine puts the old dictionaries of the land and the old world in one place: look up any word, see one meaning across 100+ word lists, and test any two languages against chance. Every word shows who wrote it down: priests sent to convert us, colonists, government men, scholars, or the people themselves. And the engine proves its own method on families everyone agrees on before any result counts.
Open the Language EngineRun it in the Engine RoomEvery Engine of America
Old dictionariesSound skeletonsChance testsWho wrote it
What it can do
- Searches 49 old dictionaries, 134,295 entries, with links to the scanned pages
- Shows one meaning across 100+ word lists with each word's sound skeleton
- Tests any two languages against chance in four modes, in your browser
- Turns any word into its sound skeleton and finds every word with the same one
- Scoreboard of every land language against every old world language, with the leads that keep coming back
- Proves itself first: known families must match, unrelated pairs must stay quiet
- Tags every list by who wrote it down
Spec plate
- Fuel
- 49 old dictionaries (free scans), Lexibank word lists, Wiktionary's ancient Near East
- Method
- Consonant classes (Turchin, Peiros and Gell-Mann 2010), meaning-shuffle chance test
- Modes
- Core, wide, drift across related meanings, three-consonant roots
- Lens
- Who wrote every word down, and why
How it runs
- Look it upAny word or meaning, across every old book, each hit on its scanned page.
- Line it upOne meaning across every list, colored by sound skeleton.
- Test itTwo languages, meaning by meaning, shuffled thousands of times against luck.
- Check the makerFilter by who wrote it: our own speakers, missionaries, colonists, scholars.
Use it to
- Look up 'amaru' or 'tlatoani' across every old book
- See 'water' or 'serpent' in every list at once
- Test Quechua against Hebrew, Aymara against Japanese
- Weigh a missionary's list against our own speakers'
Straight up
- Brand new (alpha): expect some rough edges.
- Old books are read from OCR: spellings keep the scan's scars until a person checks the page.
- No land language beats the bar against an old world language yet; the leads that keep coming back are marked to dig.
- The engine puts no dates on anything.
Tested
On the live site, Nov 14, 2026
- Look up 'amaru': 14 entries in 5 books
- Guaraní ~ Tupinambá: 32 matches where luck gives 2.7
- Quechua ~ Hebrew, drift: luck level
- Controls: working in core, wide and drift
Found a bug?
This engine is in alpha: brand new. It works, but expect bugs and changes. If something broke, looked wrong or gave a bad answer, tell us. Every report gets read.