Which Language Is Richest In Words?
言語の専門家が、英語には他の言語よりも多くの単語があると言っているのを聞いたことがありますか? 主張はされていますが、それを検証することは事実上不可能です。(English) Have you heard language experts say English has more words than other languages? The claim is made, but it's practically impossible to verify.
Which Language Is Richest In Words?
//Summary -Level-C2//
Identifying the language with the most words is challenging due to inflexion, multiple meanings, and compound words. English is often cited as having the most, but this isn't easy to confirm. For instance, Spanish verbs have many forms, German easily forms new compound words, and Turkish can express entire sentences as single words. Dictionary word counts vary, with Korean leading in one list. English's vast vocabulary results from its historical absorption of foreign words. Ultimately, all languages possess a rich array of terms.
1)
Have you heard language experts say English has more words than other languages? The claim is made, but it's practically impossible to verify.
Steven Frank, the author of The Pen Commandments, claims that English has 500,000 words, with German having about 135,000 and French having fewer than 100,000.
Add info)
Currently, there are about 140,000 words in everyday Japanese. The dictionary with the most significant number of terms has 720,000 Japanese words.
https://oshiete.goo.ne.jp/qa/1189977.html%3f
2)
A blog post for The Economist agrees that English is rich in vocabulary, but comparisons with other languages can't be made for several reasons.
The most straightforward problem in comparing the size of different languages is inflexion.
Do we count "run", "runs", and "ran" as three separate words? Another problem is multiple meanings. Do we trust "run" the verb and "run" the noun as one word or two? What about "run", as in the long run of a play on Broadway?
According to a recent NPR article, "run" has at least 645 meanings!
When counting a language's words, do we count compounds? Is "every day" one word or two? Are the names of new chemical compounds words? Answering the question, "What is the richest language?" becomes more complicated.
3)
Estoy, Estás, Está—One Word or Three?
Some languages inflect much more than English. The Spanish verb "estar" has dozens of forms—estoy, estás, está, "I am," "you are," "he is", and so on.
Some languages inflect much less (Chinese is famously ending-free). So, whether we count inflected forms will significantly influence final counts.
German is obvious; it is a trifle to coin a new compound word for a unique situation. For example, is the German Unabhängigkeitserklärung—declaration of Independence—one word?
Given the possibilities for compounds, German would quickly outstrip English with the constant addition of new legitimate German "words", which Germans would accept without blinking.
4)
A Sentence that Translates as One Word
The Turkish language is similar in this way.
Turkish crams words together and does so in ways that make whole, meaningful sentences.
"Were you one of those people whom we could not make into a Czechoslovak?" translates as one word in Turkish.
You write it without spaces, pronounce it in one breath in speaking, can't be interrupted with digressions, etc.
5)
How Many Words in the Dictionary?
Another way of measuring the vocabulary in a language and comparing counts is by counting the number of words listed in a standard authoritative dictionary in that language.
From a list on Wikipedia, here's one such comparison. This is a list of dictionaries considered authoritative or complete by an approximate number of total words or headwords included.
These figures do not include entries with senses for different word classes (such as nouns and adjectives) and homographs.
Wikipedia says it's possible to count the number of entries in a dictionary, but it's impossible to count the number of words in a language.
6)
Language Words in the Dictionary
Korean 1,100,373
Japanese 500,000
Italian 260,000
English 171,476
Russian 150,000
Spanish 93,000
Chinese 85,568
7)
Which language has the most words? Maybe it's English.
The Oxford Dictionary says it's pretty probable that English has more words than most comparable world languages. The reason is historical.
English was originally a Germanic language related to Dutch and German. English shares much of its grammar and essential vocabulary with those languages.
After the Norman Conquest in 1066, English was hugely influenced by Norman French, which became the ruling class's language for a considerable period, and Latin, the language of scholarship and the Church.
Vast numbers of French and Latin words entered the language. According to Oxford, this melding of languages means English has a much larger vocabulary than either the Germanic languages or the members of the Romance language family.
English builds its vocabulary through a willingness to accept foreign words. And because English became an international language, it has absorbed vocabulary from many other sources.
8)
So, which language is richest in words?
Let us ask a different and we think the more important question:
Whatever languages you translate or interpret in—Chinese, Japanese, Russian, sign language, or others—you are bound to have a rich body of words to work with.
Which Language Is Richest In Words?
https://blog.ititranslates.com/2023/05/01/which-language-is-richest-in-words/