In Defense of English

[hidari]

Fact is...French, Swahilii, or German could have as many vocabulary words as English.... at present they do not..but any language can have an infinite amount of words....WHY must one 'gloat' about the amount of words a language has....Most people use nowhere near the limit of said language....Homer and Virgil did not need the most words in a language to write masterpieces...neither did Dostoyesvski or Proust...yet their 'native"languages are not number one on the "most words" chart...

[BenG]

It didn't seem to me as though anyone was gloating. We were just discussing the language.

[HarryT]

Nobody is gloating: simply stating a fact.

[pdurrant]

"[English doesn't] just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."

— James Nicoll

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

"[English doesn't] just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."

— James Nicoll

A good example of that is the "English" word "cul-de-sac". This is "fake" French - the French don't use that phrase at all.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by HarryT

A good example of that is the "English" word "cul-de-sac". This is "fake" French - the French don't use that phrase at all.

And it reminds me again how good Tolkien was at word play. Mr Baggins living at Bag End.

[Billi]

When I was talking about English as one of the most economic languages of the world I had cases like this in mind:

- read: no matter who (how many, which sex, I or they) or when (past, present, future) English knows only three words - read, reads, reading - whereas German has eight words and languages like Russian or Hungarian a lot more. And if you take regular verbs then you would still get only four words in English.

- book or work (or many others): English uses one and the same word for the verb and the noun, German uses different words for the verb and the noun - again German has double as much words as English here.

Okay, this is only one part of the language, for many other things there are different words for verb and noun, but these cases are no exception and occur often enough that I'm wondering how they counted the words to get the figures mentioned in this thread.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Billi

Okay, this is only one part of the language, for many other things there are different words for verb and noun, but these cases are no exception and occur often enough that I'm wondering how they counted the words to get the figures mentioned in this thread.

Oh, I see what you mean. Yes, they'd all be counted as one word.

English does have fewer inflections, certainly in regular verbs, and most words follow the general rules. Of course, it's the most common words that don't, which is a problem in all languages.

[HarryT]

The article I originally mentioned was talking about "root" words, not inflected forms.

[HomeInMyShoes]

I would not defend English. It is a bastard language.

Any language that has auto-antonyms (contronym, contranym) needs to be banned.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by HomeInMyShoes

I would not defend English. It is a bastard language.

Any language that has auto-antonyms (contronym, contranym) needs to be banned.

I can't argue with the bastardy. But surely every language has such words?

Looking over a list or two, I especially like the verb "to dust". Dusting a mantlepiece is certainly the opposite action to dusting a cake.

I wonder if other languages have words that should mean the opposite but actually mean the same thing. Flammable and inflammable are the only example I can think of in English.

[HomeInMyShoes]

^There's always the whole famous/infamous debacle. Infamous is not a true opposite of famous. They both mean well known. Infamous is for something not so good depending on one's moral viewpoint.

[kacir]

Deleted

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by HarryT

A good example of that is the "English" word "cul-de-sac". This is "fake" French - the French don't use that phrase at all.

It may not be what cul-de-sac means in English, but it sounds like a particularly unpleasant form of punishment.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

I wonder if other languages have words that should mean the opposite but actually mean the same thing. Flammable and inflammable are the only example I can think of in English.

Perhaps "valuable" and "invaluable" would be another example? And we also have words which should mean the same, but are actually opposites, such as "worthless" and "priceless".