7 ms·

The counterargument is that lots of words allow for precise concision. wordbook can be ambiguous, as almost all books are filled with words. Is wordbook specify

The counterargument is that lots of words allow for precise concision. wordbook can be ambiguous, as almost all books are filled with words. Is wordbook specifying that this book is a word book as opposed to a picture book? wordkenbook might be less ambiguous, but maybe this referring to all nonfiction books using words? all that being said, I think uncleftish[0] beholding is an amazing piece of text and a good exercise for young physicists [0]https://groups.google.com/g/alt.language.artificial/c/ZL4e3fD7eW0/m/_7p8bKwLJWkJ?pli=1 https://groups.google.com/g/alt.language.artificial/c/ZL4e3f...

lifthrasiir 4y ago
> wordbook can be ambiguous, as almost all books are filled with words. Is wordbook specifying that this book is a word book as opposed to a picture book? wordkenbook might be less ambiguous, but maybe this referring to all nonfiction books using words? Your description only applies to a word phrase "word book". The lexicalized word "wordbook" would have its own meaning (presumably one of your suggestions), just like "dictionary" does, but without requiring additional foreign morphemes.
- atchoo 4y ago
  I was curious about "thesaurus" given that is not a dictionary but still a "word book". According to Google Translate, apparently Wörterbuch also means thesaurus so OP is correct, it is more ambiguous than dictionary. The first suggested translation for thesaurus is... thesaurus... so much for compound words eh?
  - mgaunard 4y ago
    A thesaurus is a type of dictionary.
  - oefnak 4y ago
    Synoniemenbüch, probably?
    - biztos 4y ago
      Synonymwörterbuch, apparently: https://shop.duden.de/collections/worterbucher-und-sprache/products/duden-das-synonymworterbuch https://shop.duden.de/collections/worterbucher-und-sprache/p...
      - hoseja 4y ago
        Synonym, of course, being latin.
      - oblio 4y ago
        Lazy just like us. Thesaurus in Romanian is "dicționar de sinonime". I won't bother translating it back to English, you can figure it out :-D
  - lifthrasiir 4y ago
    I specifically said "lexicalized" because the word "wordbook" would be somehow related to "word" and "book" but can mean something else so these words can't no longer stand as a standalone word. Whether the word "thesaurus" can be said to be a "word book" or not is pretty much irrelevant here. If a "wordbook" meant a thesaurus then a plain dictionary would naturally use a different word (or phrase) to avoid confusion. Or more likely, "thesaurus" may not exist as a single word but would be just called a synonym dictionary.
  - NoGravitas 4y ago
    Likewordbook, surely.
- jhbadger 4y ago
  Yes, Compound words in any language are ambiguous based on their components and need to be learned as concepts into themselves. In English we have "houseboat", which means a boat that has living quarters in it that someone uses as a home. But based on the words, it could mean a boat that you keep in your house instead.
guidoism 4y ago
I feel this way when I speak Spanish. I'm constantly looking for the right word and it always seems that there is only one word in Spanish that fits multiple words in English. I've had the opposite happen where there are more precise words in Spanish, but not as often as the reverse.
wirrbel 4y ago
na, you are missing the point here, in German "Wörterbuch" (literally wordsbook) is the standard term for a dictionary. No ambiguity because by default a book is with words and then all composita describe some kind of deviation (Bilderbuch= picture book, Handbuch = handbook -> manual, Fahrtenbuch = drive book -> driver's log). English just draws vocabulary from many roots and attaches connotations to them which have to be made a bit more explicit in englisch. So english for example has from the Germanic root "hunger", and from the french root (compare french "faim" hungry -> french "famine") "famine". Now in German, famine is "Hungersnot" (hunger crisis) and "hunger" is "Hunger". Both languages are precise, yet I would say as a German native speaker, that French is more precise than English (also German is more precise but in this argument I am not impartial). Just to be clear I am no opponent of loan words, and overall I believe modern-day languages that have a written culture probably converge towards an optimal information transmission rate, which is why english will gain and lose words, so will French and German.
- MrJohz 4y ago
  You're cherry picking examples here though. How do you explain the "-zeug" words? If you think of "Zeug" more as tool then some of them kind of make more sense ("Feuerzeug", "Werkzeug", at a pinch "Spielzeug") but are you really thinking of a plane as a flying tool? And there are also cases where English has opted for a compound word and German has just invented its own: Ampel vs traffic light, for example. Personally, I feel like I can be much more precise in English than I can in German (although that's probably mostly impartiality again!) Yes there are lots of words that are ostensibly just synonyms of each other, but they're mostly not true synonyms, because they have different connotations and can be used in different ways. I miss that wealth of vocabulary in German, where it often feels like I say more to get across the exact idea that I want to. That said, a lot of that is probably familiarity and bias. I grew up in English, and learned German later in life, and I suspect you did the opposite, so obviously we're going have more intuition for our native languages.
  - Someone 4y ago
    > and German has just invented its own: Ampel vs traffic light, for example That’s not an invention, but a loan word from Latin ampulla (small oil bottle), which got a meaning “hanging lamp” (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Ampel https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Ampel)
jojobas 4y ago
Almost all books have text in them, yet nobody suffers from the ambiguity of what a textbook is.
Dalewyn 4y ago
>The counterargument is that lots of words allow for precise concision. In fact, the hallmark of writing/speaking good English is conveying yourself using the least words required with the utmost precision. Don't believe it? Watch a British politician roast someone in Parliament. That is bloody masterful English literature right there.
- mogrim 4y ago
  That's just modern fashion - in other eras "flowery" language would be considered superior.
culebron21 4y ago
In Slavic languages it's even simpler, it's "slovár" or "slóvnik", meaning something like "worder".

lifthrasiir 4y ago

> wordbook can be ambiguous, as almost all books are filled with words. Is wordbook specifying that this book is a word book as opposed to a picture book? wordkenbook might be less ambiguous, but maybe this referring to all nonfiction books using words? Your description only applies to a word phrase "word book". The lexicalized word "wordbook" would have its own meaning (presumably one of your suggestions), just like "dictionary" does, but without requiring additional foreign morphemes.

atchoo 4y ago
I was curious about "thesaurus" given that is not a dictionary but still a "word book". According to Google Translate, apparently Wörterbuch also means thesaurus so OP is correct, it is more ambiguous than dictionary. The first suggested translation for thesaurus is... thesaurus... so much for compound words eh?
- mgaunard 4y ago
  A thesaurus is a type of dictionary.
- oefnak 4y ago
  Synoniemenbüch, probably?
  - biztos 4y ago
    Synonymwörterbuch, apparently: https://shop.duden.de/collections/worterbucher-und-sprache/products/duden-das-synonymworterbuch https://shop.duden.de/collections/worterbucher-und-sprache/p...
    - hoseja 4y ago
      Synonym, of course, being latin.
    - oblio 4y ago
      Lazy just like us. Thesaurus in Romanian is "dicționar de sinonime". I won't bother translating it back to English, you can figure it out :-D
- lifthrasiir 4y ago
  I specifically said "lexicalized" because the word "wordbook" would be somehow related to "word" and "book" but can mean something else so these words can't no longer stand as a standalone word. Whether the word "thesaurus" can be said to be a "word book" or not is pretty much irrelevant here. If a "wordbook" meant a thesaurus then a plain dictionary would naturally use a different word (or phrase) to avoid confusion. Or more likely, "thesaurus" may not exist as a single word but would be just called a synonym dictionary.
- NoGravitas 4y ago
  Likewordbook, surely.
jhbadger 4y ago
Yes, Compound words in any language are ambiguous based on their components and need to be learned as concepts into themselves. In English we have "houseboat", which means a boat that has living quarters in it that someone uses as a home. But based on the words, it could mean a boat that you keep in your house instead.

guidoism 4y ago

I feel this way when I speak Spanish. I'm constantly looking for the right word and it always seems that there is only one word in Spanish that fits multiple words in English. I've had the opposite happen where there are more precise words in Spanish, but not as often as the reverse.

wirrbel 4y ago

na, you are missing the point here, in German "Wörterbuch" (literally wordsbook) is the standard term for a dictionary. No ambiguity because by default a book is with words and then all composita describe some kind of deviation (Bilderbuch= picture book, Handbuch = handbook -> manual, Fahrtenbuch = drive book -> driver's log). English just draws vocabulary from many roots and attaches connotations to them which have to be made a bit more explicit in englisch. So english for example has from the Germanic root "hunger", and from the french root (compare french "faim" hungry -> french "famine") "famine". Now in German, famine is "Hungersnot" (hunger crisis) and "hunger" is "Hunger". Both languages are precise, yet I would say as a German native speaker, that French is more precise than English (also German is more precise but in this argument I am not impartial). Just to be clear I am no opponent of loan words, and overall I believe modern-day languages that have a written culture probably converge towards an optimal information transmission rate, which is why english will gain and lose words, so will French and German.

MrJohz 4y ago
You're cherry picking examples here though. How do you explain the "-zeug" words? If you think of "Zeug" more as tool then some of them kind of make more sense ("Feuerzeug", "Werkzeug", at a pinch "Spielzeug") but are you really thinking of a plane as a flying tool? And there are also cases where English has opted for a compound word and German has just invented its own: Ampel vs traffic light, for example. Personally, I feel like I can be much more precise in English than I can in German (although that's probably mostly impartiality again!) Yes there are lots of words that are ostensibly just synonyms of each other, but they're mostly not true synonyms, because they have different connotations and can be used in different ways. I miss that wealth of vocabulary in German, where it often feels like I say more to get across the exact idea that I want to. That said, a lot of that is probably familiarity and bias. I grew up in English, and learned German later in life, and I suspect you did the opposite, so obviously we're going have more intuition for our native languages.
- Someone 4y ago
  > and German has just invented its own: Ampel vs traffic light, for example That’s not an invention, but a loan word from Latin ampulla (small oil bottle), which got a meaning “hanging lamp” (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Ampel https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Ampel)

jojobas 4y ago

Almost all books have text in them, yet nobody suffers from the ambiguity of what a textbook is.

Dalewyn 4y ago

>The counterargument is that lots of words allow for precise concision. In fact, the hallmark of writing/speaking good English is conveying yourself using the least words required with the utmost precision. Don't believe it? Watch a British politician roast someone in Parliament. That is bloody masterful English literature right there.

mogrim 4y ago
That's just modern fashion - in other eras "flowery" language would be considered superior.

culebron21 4y ago

In Slavic languages it's even simpler, it's "slovár" or "slóvnik", meaning something like "worder".