In Defense of English

[tirsales]

Originally Posted by HarryT

English has a far larger vocabulary than pretty much any other language in the world. Eg, French is estimated, according to an article I read recently, to have about 120,000 "root" words; German has about 150,000. English, by comparison, has at least 750,000.

Thats actually not accurate - you do know that some languages allow for the construction of new words (e.g. joining words (Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitänsmütze, declination or conjugation, morphing between adjective, noun, verb, etc, etc, etc)? What you are counting is simply the base vocabulary - in English this is pretty much all you got, in French or German (even more so in German) you have many more flexibilities (I actually can't remember the official name for this stuff .. something with flex).

This "counting of words" is pretty much useless ... languages are simply different


--might it be "inflection" respectively fusional language?
Yes, I believe this is the (english) name .. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusional_language )

[YGG-]

Originally Posted by tirsales

Thats actually not accurate - you do know that some languages allow for the construction of new words (e.g. joining words (Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitänsmütze, declination or conjugation, morphing between adjective, noun, verb, etc, etc, etc)? What you are counting is simply the base vocabulary - in English this is pretty much all you got, in French or German (even more so in German) you have many more flexibilities (I actually can't remember the official name for this stuff .. something with flex).

This "counting of words" is pretty much useless ... languages are simply different


--might it be "inflection" respectively fusional language?
Yes, I believe this is the (english) name .. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusional_language )

Interesting point, IMHO.

[Xenophon]

In English, many or most of the words we grabbed from scholarly Latin and Greek remain fusional. Antidisestablishmentarianism for one notorious example. These would be the ologies and isms and so on.

English -- we've got it all! (sort of ) And we verb our nouns, too!

Xenophon

[tirsales]

You got it all - somehow .. but not really

[ShortNCuddlyAm]

Originally Posted by Xenophon

In English, many or most of the words we grabbed from scholarly Latin and Greek remain fusional. Antidisestablishmentarianism for one notorious example. These would be the ologies and isms and so on.

English -- we've got it all! (sort of ) And we verb our nouns, too!

Xenophon

"I'm your noun, verbing your noun"

[wodin]

Originally Posted by thibaulthalpern

If you have access to the Oxford English Dictionary, you will be able to find the word "nother".

Why bother with Oxford, Merriam-Webster has

Originally Posted by Merriam-Webster

Main Entry: noth·er
Variant(s): or 'noth·er \ˈnə-thər\
Function: adjective
Etymology: alteration (from misdivision of another) of other, adjective
Date: circa 1909

: other —used especially in the phrase a whole nother —used chiefly in speech or informal prose

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Xenophon

In English, many or most of the words we grabbed from scholarly Latin and Greek remain fusional. Antidisestablishmentarianism for one notorious example. These would be the ologies and isms and so on.

English -- we've got it all! (sort of ) And we verb our nouns, too!

Xenophon

Most of the words like that were "invented" in Victorian times; very few are "genuine" Latin and Greek words.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by YGG-

Are you aware that you are thinking of the f*cking Académie Française about 1,000,000,000 times more than any French? Doesn't this strike you as slightly off-kilter? (may I say that in English?)
Are you that interested in the French poeple's freedom of speech? Or do you have some vested interest? Ulterior motives?
You sound like you're mostly interested in making (French) people wrong; can you pick someone else now? Or quit doing that?

Please accept my apologies if that is the way my post came across - that was absolutely not my intention.

What interests me is the "descriptive" vs. "prescriptive" approach to language adopted by different countries.

The OED is the classic example of a "descriptive" dictionary - it bases its word definitions on quotations taken from published English - books, newspapers, etc, and uses those quotations to illustrate how the different meanings of a word have changed over the years.

The Dictionnaire de l'Académie française, on the other hand, is the classic example of a "prescriptive" dictionary - one which describes not how a language actually is used, but how it should be used. The "Duden" fulfils the same purpose in Germany (it was adopted as the "official" standard for German spelling in 1902). There is, however, no such "prescriptive" dictionary of English, and there never has been.

I find it interesting that some countries have prescribed how their languages should be used, and some have not. There's absolutely no criticism inherent in saying that, let me hasten to add!

[zelda_pinwheel]

harry, you speak as if there were only ONE dictionary of the french language, by the Académie Française, but in fact there are many. maybe you have never heard of the Petit Robert, whose editorial director is Alain Rey, a brilliant linguist and lexicographer. Here is a very interesting interview with him. a relevant citation which you might want to read :

The Petit Robert just turned 40. How has it remained modern?
In 1967, there were hardly any one-volume dictionaries on the market. Their content was encyclopedic, without much information on the language itself. So when the Petit Robert came out, it was something very new. It included the conventional meanings of words, complete with examples from great authors, but it also featured everyday, familiar terms.

Indeed, by then it had become impossible to ignore everyday language. Writers had begun using it freely, and conversation was full of slang. We were also determined to be modern in the citations we chose to illustrate words: Molière rubbed shoulders with Raymond Queneau. It wasn’t just by chance that this dictionary came out right before the French revolution of 1968! Readers recognized their era in the Petit Robert. I hope they still do today.

Unlike encyclopedias, our dictionary evolves along with changes in the world. It doesn’t present a language set in stone. I’m always fighting the ideology of a certain elite that attempts to impose a superior, immutable standard on French. The fact is, languages incorporate many changing usages that are more or less legitimate. No one has the right to judge them as “good” or “bad.” In this regard, you could say that the Petit Robert is in a state of perpetual revolution.

More than 400 words were added to the 2007 edition of the Petit Robert. How were they selected?
First, we try to read everything that’s written in French, from online literature to mail-order catalogues, which wonderfully reflect contemporary lifestyles. We choose a few words, and they are then submitted to the editorial committee, whose members I appoint. Our discussions always end in a vote, and the majority rules. Unlike the Dictionnaire de l’Académie Française, the Petit Robert doesn’t try to impose a rigorous standard that will be valid for the next 50 years. We want foreigners living in France to be able to find most of the words they hear every day in our dictionary. It’s one of the criteria we consider before accepting a new term.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

harry, you speak as if there were only ONE dictionary of the french language, by the Académie Française,

Heavens, no, I certainly don't think that. Of course I'm aware that there are other French dictionaries, just as there are other German dictionaries than the Duden.

It doesn't change the fact, though, that some languages have dictionaries which are, in some sense or another, regarded as the "official definition" of the language, and that other languages do not. Don't you find that interesting? I do!

[YGG-]

Originally Posted by HarryT

[...]
It doesn't change the fact, though, that some languages have dictionaries which are, in some sense or another, regarded as the "official definition" of the language, and that other languages do not. Don't you find that interesting? I do!

this is anything but a fact !

[Xenophon]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Most of the words like that were "invented" in Victorian times; very few are "genuine" Latin and Greek words.

Sure. But they're invented and combined using combinations of Latin and Greek root-words along with conventional modifiers. So they're straight-forward to understand as long as you know the roots. And in that sense they are "fusional."

Xenophon

[YGG-]

Here, lookup the APR11 entry : http://www.robertfulghum.com/ , Fulghum says it all (by the way, I love what he writes: "everything I need to know I learned in kindergarten" is one of my all times favorite!)

[Tinwolf]

(New boy leaps in after testing water with elbow)

Speaking personally I`d hate to have to learn English if I didn`t already mostly times be speaking of the tongue of England lagwidge since I was a children.

Anyroadup there are so many strange subtleties to English that must make it difficult to learn, take there, their, they`re. How many times do people get the wrong one when writing but they sound exactly the same and mean totally different things?
Or bough (as in tree), Scarbrough (Yorkshire seaside town), tough, through all end in ough but sound totally different. What a weird language.

And don`t get me going on the apostophe

[hidari]

Originally Posted by Tinwolf

(New boy leaps in after testing water with elbow)

Speaking personally I`d hate to have to learn English if I didn`t already mostly times be speaking of the tongue of England lagwidge since I was a children.

Anyroadup there are so many strange subtleties to English that must make it difficult to learn, take there, their, they`re. How many times do people get the wrong one when writing but they sound exactly the same and mean totally different things?
Or bough (as in tree), Scarbrough (Yorkshire seaside town), tough, through all end in ough but sound totally different. What a weird language.

And don`t get me going on the apostophe

Unforturnately, People think English is an Easy Language to learn. It is not. No language is...