Why English is so difficult to learn...

[ranskaldan]

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.

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

Such legislations against "contamination" rarely work.

[chequita guevara]

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.

[ranskaldan]

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?

[Plan Austral]

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.

[ranskaldan]

guerra
gente

gente
hijo



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

[Plan Austral]

: P
The problems are minimal in comparison to english.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by ranskaldan
Exactly. Then what's the point of the remaining 99/100 of the vocabulary?

They exist and can be used.

[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.

[ranskaldan]

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.

[ranskaldan]

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...?

[chequita guevara]

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.

[ranskaldan]

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.

[chequita guevara]

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.

[chequita guevara]

What's wrong with creating a single word for fear of spiders?

[The Vagabond]

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.