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Originally Posted by Billi
Is this really true? Okay, this "recently" is now more than two years ago so that you most probably don't have this article at hand any longer.
But English has quite the opposite reputation: it is said to be one of the most economic languages in the world as it has - comparably - few grammar rules and also uses only - relatively - few words as many of its words have many (different) meanings. I would have thought that e.g. French and German had far more words.
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From the Oxford dictionaries site:
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It seems quite probable that English has more words than most comparable world languages.
The reason for this is historical. English was originally a Germanic language, related to Dutch and German, and it shares much of its grammar and basic vocabulary with those languages. However, after the Norman Conquest in 1066 it was hugely influenced by Norman French, which became the language of the ruling class for a considerable period, and by Latin, which was the language of scholarship and of the Church. Very large numbers of French and Latin words entered the language. Consequently, English has a much larger vocabulary than either the Germanic languages or the members of the Romance language family to which French belongs.
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