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Also, I've found that many non-english speakers learn a lot of their vocabulary from written sources, and so use "fancier" words than many of us native speakers

Also, I've found that many non-english speakers learn a lot of their vocabulary from written sources, and so use "fancier" words than many of us native speakers would. It reminds me of time a colleague was on the bus. Someone pressed the bell to stop when they didn't mean to. A voice with a strong foreign accent piped up from the back "I apologies, I depressed the indicator but do not wish to alight". It was absolutely perfect english that no native speaker would utter. I always struggled with the formal and informal forms in French and later when I was trying to learn Japanes, and tended to err on the side of the formal, so I'm sure I'd have sounded similar.

ghaff 4y ago
English has a vast vocabulary of words and phraseology that most native speakers would never or rarely use in everyday speech--and mostly wouldn't in non-literary writing (and even then). Get into the really less common words and even very literate English speakers probably don't know and would certainly never use a fairly large swath of English vocabulary (e.g. the words in Merriam-Webster or the OED). And that's not even getting into slang which is often specific to subcultures or a particular age group.
- enkid 4y ago
  Is that different from any other language?
  - ghaff 4y ago
    It's hard to say because of things like technical words and slang that isn't in an official dictionary but the Wikipedia article [1] suggests that English is on the high side. (The Wictionary reference for English is a bit higher than the number or words in either MW or OED.) One thing that probably drives word count in English is it has many cases where there are multiple words with similar meanings derived from French/Latin and German-like respectively. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dictionaries_by_number_of_words https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dictionaries_by_number...
  - DFHippie 4y ago
    It is easier to adopt words into English because English has so few inflections. If it's a noun, you need to be able to add an -s to the end. If it's a verb, you need to add -s, -ed, and -ing. And because the spelling is so random you don't need to make any other changes: just throw it in there. People will probably pronounce it wrong until it becomes widely adopted, like lieutenant, at which point however they're pronouncing it is the correct pronunciation in English (and it may, like lieutenant, have different correct pronunciations in different dialects). I suspect this contributes to the size of the English lexicon.

ghaff 4y ago

English has a vast vocabulary of words and phraseology that most native speakers would never or rarely use in everyday speech--and mostly wouldn't in non-literary writing (and even then). Get into the really less common words and even very literate English speakers probably don't know and would certainly never use a fairly large swath of English vocabulary (e.g. the words in Merriam-Webster or the OED). And that's not even getting into slang which is often specific to subcultures or a particular age group.

enkid 4y ago
Is that different from any other language?
- ghaff 4y ago
  It's hard to say because of things like technical words and slang that isn't in an official dictionary but the Wikipedia article [1] suggests that English is on the high side. (The Wictionary reference for English is a bit higher than the number or words in either MW or OED.) One thing that probably drives word count in English is it has many cases where there are multiple words with similar meanings derived from French/Latin and German-like respectively. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dictionaries_by_number_of_words https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dictionaries_by_number...
- DFHippie 4y ago
  It is easier to adopt words into English because English has so few inflections. If it's a noun, you need to be able to add an -s to the end. If it's a verb, you need to add -s, -ed, and -ing. And because the spelling is so random you don't need to make any other changes: just throw it in there. People will probably pronounce it wrong until it becomes widely adopted, like lieutenant, at which point however they're pronouncing it is the correct pronunciation in English (and it may, like lieutenant, have different correct pronunciations in different dialects). I suspect this contributes to the size of the English lexicon.