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I'm also a native French speaker, but I'm bilingual ( British mother ). French definitely neither has nor uses a wider vocabulary than English, if only because

I'm also a native French speaker, but I'm bilingual ( British mother ). French definitely neither has nor uses a wider vocabulary than English, if only because English keeps growing while modern French stopped evolving a while ago. The only kind of French which does evolve is spoken French, which bears little resemblance to written French nowadays. Now, for some reason, there's a widely propagated myth in France which is that English in particular is a <em> very poor </em> language : English is supposed to have a very limited vocabulary, and no possibility to express subtle ideas accurately. I have no idea where this myth comes from - maybe the old French-English rivalry - , but I guess it is the source of your belief.

murbard2 12y ago
What do you make of the statistics quoted below which shows that, at the 95th percentile, French uses 50% more words than English? Compare http://www.eupedia.com/europe/missing_words_english.shtml http://www.eupedia.com/europe/missing_words_english.shtml and http://www.eupedia.com/europe/missing_words_french.shtml http://www.eupedia.com/europe/missing_words_french.shtml I see many errors in the second list, do you see many in the first? I do not consider English a poor language at all. I find it extremely flexible and expressive, whereas French just comes with a very large standard library.