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Do the English Use More Words Than the French?

filipwolanski.com

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Re: Do the English Use More Words Than the French?

#51

Post by pcrh »

omonra wrote: post #48
pcrh wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which words in that passage are not easily understandable? The most "obscure" one that I can identify is "notwithstanding" (Google gives 48,000,000 results for "notwithstanding", so it is not exactly an obscure word). A failure to understand that passage is a failure of comprehension, not of vocabulary.

You're talking about something else - individual words (at least in this passage) are certainly known to everybody. But what % of English speakers do you think can understand the passage?

To clarify: what is it that you do not understand about the posted passage?

Re: Do the English Use More Words Than the French?

#52

Post by omonra »

pcrh wrote: post #51
omonra wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're talking about something else - individual words (at least in this passage) are certainly known to everybody. But what % of English speakers do you think can understand the passage?

To clarify: what is it that you do not understand about the posted passage?

Honestly - I don't understand anything. Imagine you had an English text with half the words substituted with Dutch ones (that look similar but make no sense).

So you might think you understand 2-3 words in a row only to come across the fourth word that seems key for the line but means nothing to you in the given context.

Re: Do the English Use More Words Than the French?

#53

Post by pcrh »

omonra wrote: post #52
pcrh wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To clarify: what is it that you do not understand about the posted passage?

Honestly - I don't understand anything. Imagine you had an English text with half the words substituted with Dutch ones (that look similar but make no sense). So you might think you understand 2-3 words in a row only to come across the fourth word that seems key for the line but means nothing to you in the given context.

What makes it harder to understand is not the vocabulary, but the grammar, as well as Shakespeare's sometimes idiosyncratic use of word meaning. For example, "strain" here means a portion of music, which while not its most common meaning, is certainly within the abilities of most educated native speakers of English to understand, at least from context.

Re: Do the English Use More Words Than the French?

#54

Post by omonra »

pcrh wrote: post #53
omonra wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly - I don't understand anything. Imagine you had an English text with half the words substituted with Dutch ones (that look similar but make no sense). So you might think you understand 2-3 words in a row only to come across the fourth word that seems key for the line but means nothing to you in the given context.

What makes it harder to understand is not the vocabulary, but the grammar, as well as Shakespeare's sometimes idiosyncratic use of word meaning. For example, "strain" here means a portion of music, which while not its most common meaning, is certainly within the abilities of most educated native speakers of English to understand, at least from context.

That's exactly what I mean - words that we otherwise know are used with completely different meaning, which renders the text unintelligible.

I disagree with you completely that 'most educated native speakers' can understand this. By the same token one can say that most native English speakers can solve differential equations :)

The definition of strain you mention is #30 in the dictionary - http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/strain. Can you cite its use in that meaning in a contemporary newspaper or magazine?

Re: Do the English Use More Words Than the French?

#55

Post by pcrh »

omonra wrote: post #54
pcrh wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes it harder to understand is not the vocabulary, but the grammar, as well as Shakespeare's sometimes idiosyncratic use of word meaning. For example, "strain" here means a portion of music, which while not its most common meaning, is certainly within the abilities of most educated native speakers of English to understand, at least from context.

That's exactly what I mean - words that we otherwise know are used with completely different meaning, which renders the text unintelligible. I disagree with you completely that 'most educated native speakers' can understand this. By the same token one can say that most native English speakers can solve differential equations :) The definition of strain you mention is #30 in the dictionary - http://dictionary.referenc…

As to usage of "strain" in music, a quick search lead me to this article from the US dated 16 Feb 2015 [1] "When the trumpets blare and the snares rattle during the opening strain of John Phillip Souza’s The Washington Post March..."

I not proposing that Shakespeare is the easiest thing to read, but merely suggesting that it is not as inaccessible as it might first appear.

[1]http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/h...

Re: Do the English Use More Words Than the French?

#56

Post by pcrh »

omonra wrote: post #54
pcrh wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes it harder to understand is not the vocabulary, but the grammar, as well as Shakespeare's sometimes idiosyncratic use of word meaning. For example, "strain" here means a portion of music, which while not its most common meaning, is certainly within the abilities of most educated native speakers of English to understand, at least from context.

That's exactly what I mean - words that we otherwise know are used with completely different meaning, which renders the text unintelligible. I disagree with you completely that 'most educated native speakers' can understand this. By the same token one can say that most native English speakers can solve differential equations :) The definition of strain you mention is #30 in the dictionary - http://dictionary.referenc…

By the way, I found the "Spark Notes" for "If Music be the food of love". It's a dreadful lump when the poetry is gone, but here it is:

"If it’s true that music makes people more in love, keep playing.

Give me too much of it,

so I’ll get sick of it and stop loving.

Play that part again! It sounded sad.

Oh, it sounded like a sweet breeze blowing

gently over a bank of violets,

taking their scent with it. That’s enough. Stop.

It doesn’t sound as sweet as it did before.

Oh, love is so restless!

That, despite it's ability to encompass

as much as the sea, is impenetrable,

to anything, cannot be bought,

yet becomes cheap.

Even if fleeting, though, love is so varied and rich

that it is the highest pinnacle of experience.

Re: Do the English Use More Words Than the French?

#57

Post by barrkel »

murbard2 wrote: post #47
barrkel wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

English is a bit more subtle. It has inherited a lot of French vocabulary from the Normans, as well as retaining Anglo-Saxon roots. So it often has more words for things other languages have fewer words for, with English having more shades of meaning. Take happy for example: joyous, joyful, gay, merry, gleeful, etc. I counted some 50 words in the thesaurus under happy, but many of them only translate to joyeaux or ga…

http://www.synonymo.fr/synonyme/heureux

Many English dictionaries have more than 300k entries. The reason is that many of the words are close synonyms inherited from different sources. That's what I was trying to get at in my carefully constructed sentence.

IMO the synonyms you link to aren't as close as those at http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/happy - I believe there are further English translations of many of those on your page, but they take things in a different direction. Many of them relate to luck, for example.

I experimented with synonymo.fr a little further. It looks like many distinct English words have a single French word translation, and that French word has different meanings in different contexts. Consequently, looking up the synonyms for that word, you end up seeing synonyms for all the different contextual meanings for that word.

For example, take the word 'sky'. A quick scan seems to suggest French doesn't have distinctly separate words for sky vs heaven, translating both as ciel. Synonymo.fr suggests lots of synonyms, but they are mostly synonyms for heaven, not sky. It's like this with most French words I experimented with; same word, lots of different meanings, where English has separate words without the same degree of "meaning spread". That is, the English words are more precise and less ambiguous. And there are usually more of them, without wandering into different concepts.

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