20-12-2002 06:42									#31
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quote: Originally posted by chegitz guevara Spanish only has 200,000 words, 40% of English.

But how many English words are actually in usage?

I consider it pretty useless if words are just there to fill up a dictionary - if we have words like "arachnidophobia" instead of "fear of spiders", words that absolutely no one uses except to show off a superior knowledge of Greek. An infinite number of these words can be spawned any time from a number roots - how about "melahemomegarachnidophobia", and if anything, random spawning of obscure words that do not actually contribute to the language is a bad thing.

As for languages that "seem" to have less words - any language that has a reasonable amount of artistic and cultural history would have created a wealth of idioms, compounds and paraphrases that are equal in succinctness and beauty to extra English words. After all, human memory and artistic/communicative potential don't vary between nations.

Hence, I would doubt that other languages have much less useful words than English.

quote: unlike certain European languages that legislate out "contaminating" foreign words.

Such legislations against "contamination" rarely work.

	20-12-2002 06:53									#32
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quote: Originally posted by ranskaldan But how many English words are actually in usage? I consider it pretty useless if words are just there to fill up a dictionary - if we have words like "arachnidophobia" instead of "fear of spiders", words that absolutely no one uses except to show off a superior knowledge of Greek.

You missed the part about excluding scientific and technical jargon. On average we use about 1/1000th of the words we have in our language, and most of us only know about 1/100th of the words in our language.

	20-12-2002 06:58									#33
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quote: Originally posted by chegitz guevara You missed the part about excluding scientific and technical jargon. On average we use about 1/1000th of the words we have in our language, and most of us only know about 1/100th of the words in our language.

Exactly. Then what's the point of the remaining 99/100 of the vocabulary?

	20-12-2002 06:59									#34
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In spanish it is imposible to read something and to not pronounce it correctly.

A,b,c,d,e,f,g,h.... they have only one sound in spanish for each one.

In english : woman, saw, said, all of those words have an A inside, but it sounds different in the three examples.

	20-12-2002 07:10									#35
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guerra
gente

gente
hijo



but you're right. English spelling is a nightmare.

	20-12-2002 07:20									#36
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: P
The problems are minimal in comparison to english.

	20-12-2002 07:27									#37
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quote: Originally posted by ranskaldan Exactly. Then what's the point of the remaining 99/100 of the vocabulary?

They exist and can be used.

	20-12-2002 08:35									#38
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The tough thing about English is all its grammatical "exceptions" like children instead of childs. Don't forget that us Scandinavians gave English the words with silent k's, like Knife; and turning knifes into kinves, or wolfs into wolves.

	20-12-2002 08:35									#39
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cg:
When they're actually used, the majority of the English population, writers included, wouldn't know them anyway.

Besides, is the number of words a good measure of the richness of a language? There are, at most, 15-20 meaningful English words for greatness (grandeur, splendour, majesty, etc), and this is very likely true for any language: 15-20 synonyms for any broad concept, each word with its own subtle nuances. Words beyond this range are meaningless, because the other obscure, rare words that happen to mean "greatness" don't contribute at all to the richness of the language.

That's why despite higher statistics, English isn't particularly richer than other languages.

	20-12-2002 08:36									#40
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quote: Originally posted by Odin The tough thing about English is all its grammatical "exceptions" like children instead of childs. Don't forget that us Scandinavians gave English the words with silent k's, like Knife; and turning knifes into kinves, or wolfs into wolves.

And sky, and skirt, and ski, and skip...
notice a pattern...?

	20-12-2002 08:41									#41
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quote: Originally posted by ranskaldan Besides, is the number of words a good measure of the richness of a language? Is "arachnidophobia" a richer, more expressive term than "fear of spiders"? Of course not.

And yet, most people use the word, arachnophobia. Go figure. Stop dissing on English. It may not be as melodic as Finnish or as ancient as Chinese, but it's more powerful and more versatile, just like C is more powerful than Basic.

	20-12-2002 08:45									#42
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Well, firstly, I edited my post while you were quoting it. But I maintain my point that "arachnophobia" and many other Greco-Latin creations that we have, are pointless, frivolous appendages that do not qualify as words with their own nuances and expressiveness.

But you still haven't proven your point that English is somehow more powerful and versatile.

Last edited by ranskaldan on 20-12-2002 at 08:51

	20-12-2002 09:00									#43
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You DanS'ed me. Anyway, I'm not convinced that other languages have 15-20 synonyms for greatness.

Not every language is capable of puns, for example. My Russian teacher (who spoke with a thick accent) used to tell us that there are no puns in Russian, because there are very few homonyms. Russian humor is more situational than linguistic. Very sad.

	20-12-2002 09:02									#44
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What's wrong with creating a single word for fear of spiders?

	20-12-2002 09:11									#45
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quote: Originally posted by chegitz guevara Not every language is capable of puns, for example. My Russian teacher (who spoke with a thick accent) used to tell us that there are no puns in Russian, because there are very few homonyms. Russian humor is more situational than linguistic. Very sad.

What?! This is completely untrue. Your teacher misled you big time.

	20-12-2002 09:20									#46
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As for the English language, it's really cool: versatile, rich and flexible. In the computer age, English found itself at a huge advantage over other classical languages: short, no noun declensions, verb forms are pretty simple, no gender, etc.

	20-12-2002 09:20									#47
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Your first point is answered.
Besides, Chinese has a lot more homonyms than English. But that's beside the point - each languages has its own quirks where humour can be found.

quote: Originally posted by chegitz guevara What's wrong with creating a single word for fear of spiders?

Nothing wrong with it. But it adds nothing to the richness or descriptiveness of English. That was my point in the first place - a large vocabulary does not mean that language is any richer. Just because Spanish may have 40% or 400% of the English vocabulary doesn't say anything about the richness of either English or Spanish.

	20-12-2002 09:27									#48
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quote: Originally posted by The Vagabond As for the English language, it's really cool: versatile, rich and flexible. In the computer age, English found itself at a huge advantage over other classical languages: short, no noun declensions, verb forms are pretty simple, no gender, etc.

Explain to me the subtle differences between
"As we were saying"
"While we were saying"
"Although we were saying"
"Even though we were saying"
"Since we were saying"
"When we were saying"
"While saying"
"In saying"
"By saying"
"Through saying"
"Though saying"
"Since saying"

when Latin has just one word for all of the above.

Then tell me that English has an advantage over Latin.

	20-12-2002 09:29									#49
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The two biggest problems with learning English are the aforementioned homonyms (your, you're, etc.) and rediculous letter combinations that produce different sounds (ph, th, sh, gh, au, ai, etc, etc, etc). We have a very unphonetic alphabet.

	20-12-2002 09:33									#50
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quote: Originally posted by ranskaldan ...when Latin has just one word for all of the above.

I doubt that. Perhaps you confused Latin with Esperanto?

	20-12-2002 09:33									#51
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In my french class I've certainly seen some clever puns…
That said, I'd really like to add that I love the word 'puissance'.

	20-12-2002 09:35									#52
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quote: Originally posted by ranskaldan when Latin has just one word for all of the above. Then tell me that English has an advantage over Latin.

I'm not sure what you're getting at -- the fact that there are so many ways to express a similar idea is an advantage of English as far as I can see. Or is that what you were saying?

	20-12-2002 09:37									#53
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v:
I don't. The gerundive, I think, is used normally to express all of those forms.

a:
Well depends on how you look at it -- Vagabond just mentioned simplicity as an advantage. But is complexity an advantage instead?

	20-12-2002 09:38									#54
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m:

Yes... I learnt "puissance" in French class too... though I still prefer the rawness of "power".

	20-12-2002 09:43									#55
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quote: Originally posted by ranskaldan Well depends on how you look at it -- Vagabond just mentioned simplicity as an advantage. But is complexity an advantage instead?

This depends on how you look at it. Simplicity on a small scale helps to create a wonderful complexity on a large scale.

	20-12-2002 09:48									#56
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Fractals.

	20-12-2002 09:51									#57
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quote: Originally posted by chegitz guevara English is a wonderful language. It is the best language for poetry and humor, because of it's huge vocabulary. It's the largest language in the world, with almost half a million words, not including technical and scientific jargon.

No, I will have to go with Chinese as the best language for poetry.

	20-12-2002 09:52									#58
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ranskaldan, would you agree that English suits for computers much more than any other major language?

	20-12-2002 09:55									#59
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Yes.

Because the keyboard was designed for English.

	20-12-2002 09:58									#60
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This has nothing to do with the keyboard.