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Which language has the LARGEST vocabulary?
i know this topic is 'a bit pointless' to be discussed,but still interseting.
MOST English sources says it's English,followed by Mandarin (or Spanish/German/Russian,different sources varied)
i've heard Arabic has somewhat 9 MILLIONs words,is that true?
and what's the HUMAN language with smallest vocabulary?Hebrew?
English has the largest vocabulary.
if it's English,then who's the 2nd Largest?
my guess it's Finnish or Hungarian
as for Chinese or Japanese,i dont think they are comparable to western languages since they have different definitions of the term 'word' .
ALMOST all Germanic Languages have BIGGER Vocabualries than the Romance languages.
Dutch and German are pretty BIG.
Is that due to the fact that they have such a large Latin influence on top of Germanic words?
I think a better question would be "which language has the largest amount of words in widespread use".
Such a question doesn't make much sense.
"ALMOST all Germanic Languages have BIGGER Vocabualries than the Romance languages. "
That's right, but if "Hurensohn" counts as one word, why wouldn't "son of a bitch" or "hijo de puta"?
How do you know?
I'm only sure that English vocabulary is larger than Chinese, because loads of concepts that have been put in English in English Wikipedia have still been absent in the Chinese world. By size I mean HOW the vocabulary is used. An item is useless if you don't use it.
We certainly have all sorts of dictionaries (English-Chinese) for medicine, textile things, engineering and so on, and then a great many of them have been considered to have originated in English. Then, my wild guess is the "leading" language would also have the largest vocabulary before it is the very language that create words for NEW concepts first - particularly in the fields of technology and pop culture.
(Then, here, it is the point to end discussions about how to talk about int'l languages. English has been this leading language, and a great many of us ESL speakers are learning the words for other non-Anglophone foreign concepts even before we ever have time to study the source languages, such as those as popular as French and German.)
Another analogy: Since Mandarin, written AND spoken, has been the only official language for all Chinese "nations" (if it is really a plural), I can personally import any "Mandarin" word into my Cant. idiolect and always make myself understood (even by monolinguals), but I cannot claim any Cant. words as Mandarin on my own, unless everyone else in the north agrees. In recent years, some Northerners have noticed how economical the HK "dialect" is, and thus have imported several words into the Modern Chinese Dictionary. So you see, the language of power create words and can borrow whenever it sees fit, and the weaker ones have no say.
I'm only sure that English vocabulary is larger than Chinese, because loads of concepts that have been put in English in English Wikipedia have still been absent in the Chinese world. By size I mean HOW the vocabulary is used. An item is useless if you don't use it. ---Xie
Xie,do you consider these entries listed in Wikipedia are words?
yes Wikipedia Chinese only has 166,948 entries while the English version has 2,256,533!
you know what?that's simply because Wikipedia is blocked in China!
the LARGEST Chinese online encyclopedia Hoodong Baike has 2,336,820 entries,arguably the largest encyclopedia available in the world.
http://www.hoodong.com/
Does this make Chinese the WORLD's LARGEST Language?
Chinese is somewhat like German,they use compounds,their vocabualries are limitless.
it is said you can make up 2 million words using less than 5,000 Chinese characters,and there are almost 100,000 characters altogether.
i would like to assume if English is largest western language,Chinese must be its Big Brother in the east.
<<Is that due to the fact that they have such a large Latin influence on top of Germanic words? >.
Partly. For English, definitely.
Also, because of compund word formations as alluded to by:
<<That's right, but if "Hurensohn" counts as one word, why wouldn't "son of a bitch" or "hijo de puta"? >>
In all germanic languages other than English, compound words are units, whereas in English they are phrases: "Life Insurance Company" (1 concept = 3 words) as opposed German "Lebensversicherungsgesellschaft" (1 concept, 1 word made up of 3 combined words)
On average, English and Germanic languages have different words often with different origins for nuances of meaning, where Romance languages *usually* (not always) use one word with different senses, or derivations (same word with different endings) to express the same:
English: sick, ill, bad, evil
French: mal, mal, mal, mal
English: time, termperature, weather
French: temps, temps, temps
English: mouse, rat
Spanish: ratón, rata
English: good, pretty, kind, OK/alright
Spanish: bueno, bonito, bondadoso, bueno
--Spanish bendito, bondadoso, bueno, bonito, buenazo, bonachón all come from the same basic word as 'bueno', adapting the same root with different endings.
English can do this too (good, goodly, goodliness, goodhearted [compound word], good-natured, etc), but these are rare or antiquated terms. English prefers to use suppletive words which do not resemble the basic concept (sun>solar; moon>lunar). French does this to an extent as well.
This doesn't mean that Romance is not as rich as Germanic. Quite the contrary. And these are only limited examples, and yes, I know that there are other words in French and Spanish that could be substituted to make each word different, but these are the general terms and are used to show that *on average* this type of thing happens more frequently in Romance than in Germanic, although it occurs in Germanic, esp. English too. Just for example:
French: temps, fois, heure
German: Zeit, mal, Uhr
English: time, time/time(s), time
That's cuz English doesn't have an academy that controls the English language, therefore any dictionary can add any word they want, that's why English has so many words, no one ever uses them, just have them there to say they have the biggest vocabulary, which is quite absurd sin most people can’t even spell big words.
這類太空強國的東西，真難以令人信服。說真的，我寧願不看。
中文維基？我也寫過一些東西。我只能說，中文的世界還是非常落後，在我懂寫、懂寫得多之前，還是只有看英文版好了。閣下如果是有心請我看的話，謝謝了，看了一下，我沒什麼興趣；如果要賣廣告的話，那恐怕閣下來錯地方了，這裡沒甚麼人懂看中文，更不要說看這樣質素難以保證的東西。
我也不覺得條目多，就代表中文突然就會變得很厲害，詞彙會突然增加了一大截。我是香港來的，我接受的教育用英文教的，教的是批判思考，而不是馬列毛鄧那堆廢話。我也不喜歡所謂英文教育，但我很明白，沒有這樣的教育，我也不會知道中文世界根本就是很欠缺資料。閣下有興趣的話，不妨用代理軟件自己去看，去問維基人。我不認為值得花時間在這裡說明中文欠缺了甚麼。有些概念，不學就不知，即使強行譯作中文，中國的人沒讀過，都是沒有用。
中文維基，我也承認其內容很少（連用來參考也不太夠），但是你們信也好，不信也好，我倒是看到不少文章都是靠個人努力一點一點寫出來的，根本不像百度（當然也不能說全部都是）那樣，引進大量亂抄的文章，以致整個網站的文章雜亂無章……我只是想，誰叫這個”國家”沒有俄式的（航天科）百科資料庫？誰叫這個”國家”限制言論？即使有心人願意在百度寫”原創文章”，即使寫一百萬篇，都是難登大雅之堂，都是改善不了百度的形象，都是不能說服我去”信任”這些的網站。
(to those who can't read: plz don't post translations, because they would be too long; I'm afraid you would easily mess them up and misunderstand them)
>>>it is said you can make up 2 million words using less than 5,000 Chinese characters,and there are almost 100,000 characters altogether. <<<
What!? I know wikipedia isn't absolutely reliable, but you must take a glance at the relevant articles, as one of the ways to find your proof, if you are willing to...
<<Then, my wild guess is the "leading" language would also have the largest vocabulary before it is the very language that create words for NEW concepts first - particularly in the fields of technology and pop culture.>>
Should all these specialist technical words really count toward the total vocabulary of a language? Examples from Chemistry and medicine:
(1α,3α,5α)-1,3,5-Trimethyl-1,3,5-cyclohexanetricarboxylic Acid Acetonitrile
Hypogammaglobulinemia
It seems taht many of the "million" English words must be in this category
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