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I am not particularly familiar with Spanish, but with German as my primary language I had the opposite impression that English is a language with an excessive a
by zyx321 8y ago
I am not particularly familiar with Spanish, but with German as my primary language I had the opposite impression that English is a language with an excessive amount of words. There were so many words that have different meanings but offer no useful distinction, such as (pig/pork) or (damp/dank/moist/humid).
As such, it would be quite interesting to see some kind of quantitative judgment on the matter of which language has more or (less/fewer) ambiguous words.
- sornaensis 8y agoA towel is damp it is not humid. A pig is not a pork. A rain-forest is humid but not dank, a cellar may be dank. Food is moist, not damp, etc etc. These words have reason to exist and have particular usages.
- jerrre 8y agoIf other languages can exist where pork and pig are the same word, doesn't it prove the opposite?
- yorwba 8y agoThose languages usually qualify pork as "pig meat" if necessary. (Schweinefleisch in German, 猪肉 in Chinese)
- zyx321 8y agoBut only if necessary. In most cases the "meat" either implied ("What kind of meat is that?" "Pig") or replaced by the specific name of the cut (Schweineschnitzel, Putenbrust, Lammkotlett).
- cm2012 8y agoThe "extra" english words succinctly add context then.
- zyx321 8y agoThey only exist because nobles wanted to pretend that the food they eat is so much fancier than that of the peasants, so they insisted on using French to describe it.
- boomlinde 8y agoAssuming that this is true, that also adds a distinct meaning to the word so that saying "pork" as opposed to "pig meat" would have served as an indication of class status in addition to e.g. what you'll be eating for dinner.
- mikeash 8y agoI think a better proof would be “chicken” in English. If we get by without the distinction for one animal, it doesn’t make sense that we’d need it for another.
- sornaensis 8y agoThe poster I replied to said there was 'no useful distinction' between the words, which is provably false. They are synonyms, not the same words, despite the fact that their usages might overlap in many contexts, there are contexts where only one is really appropriate.
- dragonwriter 8y ago> A pig is not a pork. No, but it is pork (while pork is most often used for meat, it can be used for live pigs, especially those destined for meat, and structurally differs from “pig” in such use largely in that it is a mass, rather than countable, noun.) > A rain-forest is humid but not dank A rainforest absolutely can be dank, as well as merely humid. > These words have reason to exist and have particular usages While that's true, the particular current usages aren't the historical reason they exist in many cases, it's just a result of how overlapping meanings have shaken out to be more (but not completely) distinct over time.
- zyx321 8y agoI know what these words mean. Air is humid and sponges are damp, but in either case it means "slightly wet" and there is very little chance of confusion. There are valid reasons to have more words, such as English's seven distinct words for horse as opposed to German's five (depending on sex and age of the animal in question). Those words do make a useful distinction that experts care about, but there are so many English words where the extra information they convey is completely redundant.
- Baeocystin 8y agoI feel the same way about the 16+ ways to say 'the' in German. (And before you retort with 'but those are grammatically important!' Let me say yes, I agree, they are, and because you live within the language, you implicitly understand why. Let's just say that as an English speaker, I feel the same way about English's tendency to have a million synonyms for everything. Each one has its own, distinct flavor, and such aggressive vocabulary theft* is a fundamental part of English's charm.) * “The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don'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 D. Nicoll
- 0xfeeddeadbeef 8y agoIn Georgian languages we have at least 9 nouns and 64 adjectives for "rain", but each of these denote different kinds of rain (To be honest, most of these words are archaic, belong to regional dialects, or are used by poets only).