Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

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Relative Prevalence Of The Word For Beer In Europe’s Ten Most Spoken Languages

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europe
Today’s infographic graphs is similar to yesterday’s one showing “the relative prevalence of the word for beer in the world’s ten most spoken languages (by # of native speakers),” but instead shows the same metric for Europe. The map was also created by http://www.floatingsheep.org/2011/10/wherever-you-are-just-ask-for-beer.html”>Floating Sheep, and was a follow up to yesterdays.

Because simply mapping references to beer in the world’s most spoken languages yielded a relatively homogeneous result due to the significant number of references to “beer” and “ale” in English, we thought a more locally specific analysis would be appropriate. So we instead mapped references to beer in twelve languages spoken primarily in Europe that were not included in our earlier map. And while this map obviously doesn’t include all of the many languages spoken on the continent, these languages were chosen because of their relative prominence within a larger sample of languages.

world_beer_euro_110723
Click here to see the map full size.

Despite the usefulness of this particular grouping, it remains useful to consider how some of the most spoken languages in the world stack up to these more country-specific languages, so in the map below we reintroduce references in English, as well as references in German, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish, to some of Europe’s more widely spoken tongues.

While this graphic complicates the picture provided by our first map — there continues to be a significant amount of content in the expected, native languages of each country — English remains prominent throughout Europe, especially in reference to beer.

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Click here to see the map full size.

Beer In Ads #952: They All Come Back To Pabst

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Monday’s ad is for Pabst Blue Ribbon, this one from 1913. It’s a fairly simple ad, with two men (possibly famous? – the one on the left looks a little familiar) clinking some pretty small glasses of beer. They look a lot like modern 4 oz. sample glasses. One thing I am curious about; what was it they were doing that they had to “come back to Pabst?”

pabst-1913

Relative Prevalence Of The Word For Beer In The World’s Ten Most Spoken Languages

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world-map-3
Today’s infographic graphs out the “the relative prevalence of the word for beer in the world’s ten most spoken languages (by # of native speakers). However, because of the fact that there were no points at which the number of references in the world’s sixth most-spoken language, Bengali, were greater than references to each of the other nine languages, we have excluded Bengali in this particular case. So while we’re sad to see Bengali left off the map, the fact that a language with 181 million native speakers has so few references to “beer” is telling of either vast inequalities in the way Bengalis are represented within the geoweb, or perhaps just their general distaste for beer.” The map was created by Floating Sheep, one of my favorite websites.

world_beer_top10_110723
Click here to see the map full size.

“Zooming in to Europe only further accentuates the relative dominance of English among these languages, with significant portions of Portugal, Spain, and Germany even showing more references to beer than in their native languages. Interesting, however, that much of France is a mixture of English and German references, even in the much more southern portions of the country.”

world_beer_top10_euro_110724
Click here to see the European map full size.

Beer In Ads #951: Tommy Henrich, Athlete-of-the-Year

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Friday’s ad is again for Pabst Blue Ribbon, also from 1950. This one features New York Yankee Tommy Henrich, who apparently was named Athlete-of-the-Year that year. He’s showing off his World Series home run ball, from what series I have no idea. Given the look on his face, it’s probably a good thing he’s sharing a PBR so his guest can endure his tall tales.

pabst-1950-tommy-heinrich

Mosquitoes Prefer Beer Lovers

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mosquito
There was an interesting article recently in the Smithsonian’s Surprising Science entitled Why Do Mosquitoes Bite Some People More Than Others? The article provides a good overview about why some people get bitten more frequently than others, and some of the causes believed to account for this very real phenomenon.

An estimated 20 percent of people, it turns out, are especially delicious for mosquitoes, and get bit more often on a consistent basis. And while scientists don’t yet have a cure for the ailment, other than preventing bites with insect repellent (which, we’ve recently discovered, some mosquitoes can become immune to over time), they do have a number of ideas regarding why some of us are more prone to bites than others.

Some of the factors include blood type, carbon dioxide, exercise and metabolism, pregnancy, skin bacteria, the color of your clothing and even genetics. But the interesting one that stood out for me, of course, was beer.

Just a single 12-ounce bottle of beer can make you more attractive to the insects, one study found. But even though researchers had suspected this was because drinking increases the amount of ethanol excreted in sweat, or because it increases body temperature, neither of these factors were found to correlate with mosquito landings, making their affinity for drinkers something of a mystery.

That beer is a mosquito attracter was confirmed by a study with the wonderfully bland title Alcohol ingestion stimulates mosquito attraction (seriously, who comes up with the titles for journal articles, so often they’re just dreadful). Of course, even though they know that it’s true that drinking alcohol attracts more mosquito bites, they still haven’t a clue why.

I’d love to see a study of different kinds of beer to see if any particular kind is more attractive to mosquitos than another. Can you imagine the ad copy following that study? “Drink our beer at your next picnic and mosquitoes will leave you alone!”

Mosquito-Beach

Beer In Ads #950: Hit The Ball

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Thursday’s ad is again for Pabst Blue Ribbon, this one from 1950. Showing an old-fashioned tennis player — is that Pancho Gonzalez again? — using a racket with just one string, the analogy they’re using is that playing that way is the equivalent of not blending your beer. Blending is great, but it’s not the only way to brew a beer, and it may not even be the best way to make a pilsner. But how about that outfit?

pabst-1950-tennis