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Which language has the MOST NATIVE Words?
Which language has the most NATIVE Words (self-created) words by Percent?
I guess it's either Chinese or Arabic, for they seldom borrow words from other languages. Language with the most 'imported words' are English and Japanese.
<<Language with the most 'imported words' are English and Japanese. >>
Korean is less native than English is (60%+ Sino words). Vietnamese is as well (70%+).
English is less native
70% from French,the other, Latin,ancient Greek or Germanic... So, English is the dialect of French language.
Even Arabic and Chinese have plenty of loanwords. Perhaps the language of some tribe in the amazon rainforest that has remained completely isolated.
I think classifying a word as native or non-native is somewhat arbitrary, because words all ultimately come from somewhere.
>>Even Arabic and Chinese have plenty of loanwords.
I don't think so. It may be true if you reveal the etymology of every word, but in *learning*, unfortunately, international words/loanwords in Chinese don't resemble anything like English/others at all. Japanese words might be easier, but not always.
<<German is quite pure. I'd say. But Icelandic is realllllly pure.>>
Though less "contaminated" than English, German is actually very far from being pure.
I just read something:
At one point, the language spoken in the Faroe Islands was Old West Norse, which Norwegian settlers had brought with them during the time of the landnám that began in AD 825. However, many of the settlers weren't really Norwegians, but descendants of Norwegian settlers in the Irish Sea. In addition, native Norwegian settlers often married women from Norse Ireland, the Orkneys, or Shetlands before settling in the Faroe Islands and Iceland. As a result, Celtic languages influenced both Faroese and Icelandic. This may be why, for example, Faroese has two words for duck: dunna (from Gaelic tunnag) for a domestic duck, and ont (from Old Norse ǫnd) for a duck in general. (This example has been criticized, however, by people claiming that the word is derived from Old Norse dunna, from Proto-Germanic *dusnō.) There is also some debatable evidence of Celtic language place names in the Faroes: for example Mykines and Stóra & Lítla Dímun have been hypothesized to contain Celtic roots. Other examples of early introduced words of Celtic origin are; "blak/blaðak" (buttermilk) Irish bláthach; "drunnur" (tail-piece of an animal) Irish dronn; "grúkur" (head, headhair) Irish gruaig; "lámur" (hand, paw) Irish lámh; "tarvur" (bull) Irish tarbh; and "ærgi" (pasture in the outfield) Irish áirge.[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faroese_language I wonder how pure the Celtic language are. Irish Gaelic for instance, how pure is Irish Gaelic? Grammatically these Celtic languages seem to be one in a kind. I have read once that Gaelic and Welsh tend to be as hard as a Slavic language to learn for an anglophone, is that true? |