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First, the "there are 250K words in English" statement is kind of wrong, it's probably much higher, e.g. OED states on their web page (http://www.oxforddictiona
by Jun8 16y ago
First, the "there are 250K words in English" statement is kind of wrong, it's probably much higher, e.g. OED states on their web page (http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/page/93 http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/page/93) that "If distinct senses were counted, the total would probably approach three quarters of a million." English undoubtedly is the world's richest language in the sense of having the largest vocabulary.
As for the "they have a word for it and we don't" thing: The examples given are delightful, also see the book "They Have a Word for It" for other interesting examples. I can give more examples from my native language, "kismet" "ayip" that are untranslatable. But look at that first word, kismet: you've probably seen it used, albeit rarely, in magazines, etc. (putting aside the wireless sniffer, of course, of that name). This is the power of English, it voracious appetite for word adoption.
Ask yourself this: How many of those language listed in the article have a thesaurus, and is they have how thick it would be. Many languages are lexically shallow, i.e. there is usually one word for many concepts, with few synonym sets.
- iuguy 16y agoKismet: Destiny Ayip: Shameful There are worse Turkish concepts to choose to translate (the many alterations of Gule Gule that can be added for one, I've never been able to get my head around the construct) and the mis suffix (to have experienced something indirectly or via another person is probably the easiest way to put it). Having said that, Turkish can be extremely beautiful as a language, particularly for conveying emotion, beauty or craftiness.
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- eru 16y agoAnd it has nice grammar. My manager once put together a formal grammar for _all_ the things you can do to verbs. It fit on one sheet of paper.
- iuguy 16y agoIt is impressive, pretty much everything is regular, you can pick up enough to get started in about an hour. I find Turkish almost like the python of spoken languages.
- eru 16y agoYes. Though it takes some effort to practice is enough to be fluid. Also the vocabulary demands some rote learning, of course.
- Jun8 16y agoYep, these are the standard definitions that would be found in a Turkish-English dictionary, but I don't think they cover the nuances of these words. For example, "destiny" is very well represented by "kader", whereas "kismet" seems to have a hint of luck, etc involved. It has a certain pagan feeling to it, I think. That being said, Turkish is a good example of a language that suffers from a relative synonym deficiency. When I was working on linguistic steganography, where a message can be embedded into text by replacing words with their synonyms, I discussed applying same concepts to Turkish with a Turkish professor (Bulent Sankur). They complained that this approach is general does not work because there aren't a multitude of synonyms for may words, as in English. The reason for this is partly the brutal pruning of many Arabic-Farsi synonyms during the Language Revolution and its aftermath that were common at the time (1930s) to create a "pure" Turkish.
- iuguy 16y agoThat's interesting. To me (being a fairly basic Turkish speaker but nowhere near fluent) the difference between Kader and Kismet is that Kader is stuff that's meant to happen in a strictly secular sense (e.g. a man goes to jail because he committed a murder, this I would view as kader although perhaps incorrectly) whereas kismet is more spectacular, indeed by the will of god for those that believe in such things, such as bumping into a long lost lover on the other side of the world by chance, rekindling a relationship and getting back together - that to me is definitely kismet. I've yet to see a decent romantic story that features kader :) I think the pruning of Ottoman from modern Turkish is a double-edged sword. On the one hand it makes learning basic Turkish incredibly straightforward. It took me two weeks to get to a level of proficiency similar to that of a 7 or 8 year old with my mother in-law. It's almost deceptively easy, because when you start talking to Turks in the real world a lot of the Ottoman loan-terms never really disappeared. Also I've noticed while I can talk to my mother and father in-law, I have real trouble understanding my anane, who almost speaks an entirely different language. The other thing I've noticed (in Istanbul at least), is the anglicisation of Turkish. I remember when computers were 'knowledge desks' (Bilgisayarlar), not 'laptops' or 'pee-sees'. I've noticed this particularly with technology, but even just overhearing conversations in taksim cafes it seems that young Turks are more likely to use English words in general conversation.
- ced 16y agoEnglish undoubtedly is the world's richest language in the sense of having the largest vocabulary. Citation needed. I have, however, found this: Is it true that English has the most words of any language? This question is practically impossible to answer, for the reasons explained in the answer to How many words are there in the English language? However, it seems quite probable that English has more words than most comparable world languages. http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/page/94 http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/page/94 Also interesting, from Wikipedia: The most comprehensive pure linguistic Chinese-language dictionary, the 12-volumed Hanyu Da Cidian, records more than 23,000 head Chinese characters, and gives over 370,000 definitions. A Chinese character is a bit like a prefix/suffix in English. Most words are made of two characters. I would guess that "370,000 definitions" means there are 370,000 different words. But the phrasing is a bit strange.