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Languages with larger vocabularies | ||
Tags: Number of words | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| martinosek Diglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4705 days ago 8 posts - 8 votes Speaks: English, Polish* Studies: French, German, Russian, Turkish, Mandarin | Message 1 of 14 28 July 2012 at 10:49pm | IP Logged |
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I've seen this interesting question..
'If you speak a language that has a larger vocabulary than other langagues, does it mean that you experience the world in more details?' What's everyone's view on this? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4707 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes  Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 2 of 14 28 July 2012 at 11:02pm | IP Logged |
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Or it means the language has a lot of redundant words.
Depends on the context. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 3 of 14 28 July 2012 at 11:19pm | IP Logged |
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You experience the world in more detail if you speak several languages that all have all sorts of distinctions in them. The more the better.
6 persons have voted this message useful | |
| TheMatthias Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6246 days ago 105 posts - 124 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Mandarin | Message 4 of 14 29 July 2012 at 1:46am | IP Logged |
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I think a larger vocabulary makes it easier to describe the world, but not perceive it...?
4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| linkman226 Bilingual Triglot Newbie United States Joined 5329 days ago 26 posts - 39 votes Speaks: English*, Kannada*, Spanish Studies: Mandarin, French | Message 5 of 14 29 July 2012 at 1:47am | IP Logged |
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I think so anyways. Despite Kannada being one of my native languages and the language spoken in my home, I
can't express the same nuances and details in Kannada as I can in English. ALthough partly due to the fact that I was born and raised in America, I think a large part of it is because Kannada doesn't have a vocabulary nearly large as English. A lot of English words marked as synonyms by the thesaurus really aren't; they have subtle differences. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |
| TheMatthias Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6246 days ago 105 posts - 124 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Mandarin | Message 6 of 14 29 July 2012 at 1:49am | IP Logged |
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^Well put
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| mikonai Diglot Senior Member United States weirdnamewriting.bloRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4929 days ago 178 posts - 281 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Swahili, German | Message 7 of 14 29 July 2012 at 2:03am | IP Logged |
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I doubt the actual knowledge of a language makes me perceive the world any different,
unless you consider what else I learned while I was learning the language. There are always methods of expressing yourself, and there are always experiences that leave you speechless, and you can never express them. I could maybe see how a larger vocabulary could give you greater accuracy in speech, but there's one little tricky bit: Different people will visualize the same word in different ways. If I tell you to think of a chair, what do you think of? A straight- backed wooden one? A comfy armchair? And that's still a concrete object. What happens if I ask you what "patriotism" means? What it symbolizes? Of course, if I want you to think of something more specific, I can add adjectives. That's all well in good. But even adjectives differ on who's thinking about them. What shade comes to mind if I say the word "green"? Now take English. It has a large vocabulary, either due to redundant words or tons of words with slightly different "shades" of meaning. In theory it feels like you get a lot of detail, but I'm not so sure that's true. Because even if a word has a special connotation or subtext to me, and I use it to bring that to mind, it doesn't mean it will in your mind. "Electric" might make you think of a tingling over your skin, but to me it might be something quick and unpredictable, but who's going to go around explaining every connotation of every word we use? We don't have time for it, and half the time we don't know what subtext we actually are using. Anyway, there's a whole branch of Linguistics based on how people think about words, called "Semantics". It's pretty interesting. But the "too long; didn't read" version is this: while maybe a person can express themselves to themselves more precisely with a larger vocabulary, I'm not so sure it works when talking to anyone else. 8 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5766 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 8 of 14 29 July 2012 at 2:14am | IP Logged |
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How do you quantify vocabulary when you have a living language in which every newly discovered or unique idea can be expressed with a new word, and your only limitation is the question whether your listener actually shares the experience necessary to understand what you are trying to say?
5 persons have voted this message useful |
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