3 ms·

I suspect the 500,000 words claim comes from the Oxford dictionary, which I understand includes old english, whereas as far as I am aware the most famous french

by cm2187 7y ago

I suspect the 500,000 words claim comes from the Oxford dictionary, which I understand includes old english, whereas as far as I am aware the most famous french dictionaries (Larousse, Robert) typically don’t include old french. But it feels inconsistent with my experience of those two languages. I feel French is more expressive, largely down to tricks that are valid french like being able to use any adjective as a verb (like he le gros, tu viens?), effectively creating words on the fly.

bsaul 7y ago
i also think this original statement as complete BS. French has much more grammatical rules than english due to its latin roots (but less than other eastern european language), which is what makes a language precise and unambiguous.
willyt 7y ago
Not really to do with old english, it comes from the fact that there are loads of borrowed French words in English (and loads of words from other languages). For example the french word for 'appointment' -> 'rendezvous' is used in English to mean a specific kind of meeting 'I heard Mary's husband had a rendezvous with that woman in accounts' to allude to an illicit meeting with sexy connotations or 'meet at the rendezvous for extract at 1830 hours' in a military context. There are also many cases where we use a French word which has a specific meaning in English to sound educated rather than string together a combination of simpler english words which predate the Norman conquest. e.g. 'He ascended the stairs' without the Norman influence would be 'He went up the stairs'. I speak terrible French, but if I find myself in a situation where I don't know the right word I think of the english word and if it ends in ion, end, able, there is a good chance it is a French word and dropping it into my sentence while pronouncing it in a 'ello 'ello accent will often vaguely help things along. Other interesting examples 'chit' from Hindi, 'galore' from Gaelic.

by cm2187 7y ago

bsaul 7y ago

i also think this original statement as complete BS. French has much more grammatical rules than english due to its latin roots (but less than other eastern european language), which is what makes a language precise and unambiguous.

willyt 7y ago

Not really to do with old english, it comes from the fact that there are loads of borrowed French words in English (and loads of words from other languages). For example the french word for 'appointment' -> 'rendezvous' is used in English to mean a specific kind of meeting 'I heard Mary's husband had a rendezvous with that woman in accounts' to allude to an illicit meeting with sexy connotations or 'meet at the rendezvous for extract at 1830 hours' in a military context. There are also many cases where we use a French word which has a specific meaning in English to sound educated rather than string together a combination of simpler english words which predate the Norman conquest. e.g. 'He ascended the stairs' without the Norman influence would be 'He went up the stairs'. I speak terrible French, but if I find myself in a situation where I don't know the right word I think of the english word and if it ends in ion, end, able, there is a good chance it is a French word and dropping it into my sentence while pronouncing it in a 'ello 'ello accent will often vaguely help things along. Other interesting examples 'chit' from Hindi, 'galore' from Gaelic.