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Team Asgard (Scandinavian) - TAC ’14 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Sarnek Diglot Senior Member Italy Joined 4001 days ago 308 posts - 414 votes  Speaks: Italian*, English Studies: German, Swedish | Message 385 of 438 04 November 2014 at 11:26am | IP Logged |
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Hej
I found this pretty interesting article, and I'd like to know your opinions. Especially about this part: "According to Bill Bryson’s book “Mother Tongue”, the English language contains about 200,000 words in common use, German about 184,000, French 100,000 and Swedish only 40,000. This means, to learn fluent Swedish you only have 38,442 more words to memorize!". 200k words for English seems a bit off, imo... 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6383 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 386 of 438 04 November 2014 at 2:48pm | IP Logged |
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Well, it may be referring to the geographical spread, especially of English and French? There are probably plenty of words that are commonly used in one region but not another, both due to differences like UK/US and also cultural stuff, borrowings from the neighbouring languages etc.
Anyway, sounds kinda fishy to me. What about the compounds? Seems like they counted each compound as an individual word in German but not Swedish. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6489 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 387 of 438 04 November 2014 at 3:41pm | IP Logged |
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It is totally nonsense. There aren't 200000 words in common use in English. Even large corpora have just a few repetitions of most of the words in a regular midsized dictionary, and if you can read short snippets of a millon texts and still only get 2-3 instances of a given word then that word can't by any stretch of imagination be accepted as 'common'.
Or take it from another angle. A well educated person may know 50.000 words. If there are 200.000 words which are in common use in English then such a person should know them - otherwise they aren't in 'common enough' use. And nothing I have seen from different Anglophone cultures suggests that the words in USA are totally different from those used in UK or OZ or India. If that were the case then English simply couldn't be accepted as one language. English has probably more words than Swedish, but most of those words are NOT in common use - they are restricted geographically or antiquated or only used by certain professions. Or by me. Which precludes the illinformed use of the expression "common use" about them. Edited by Iversen on 04 November 2014 at 3:49pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sarnek Diglot Senior Member Italy Joined 4001 days ago 308 posts - 414 votes Speaks: Italian*, English Studies: German, Swedish | Message 388 of 438 04 November 2014 at 6:24pm | IP Logged |
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Apart from those curious figures, it would be interesting to know if some languages
are actually less/more demanding than others in terms of "common" vocabulary. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| daegga Tetraglot Senior Member Austria lang-8.com/553301 Joined 4307 days ago 1076 posts - 1792 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, Norwegian Studies: Danish, French, Finnish, Icelandic | Message 389 of 438 04 November 2014 at 11:54pm | IP Logged |
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From these figures it seems to me they used "common use" in the sense of not
archaic/outdated. Doesn't say anything about how often they are actually used. This is just the old game "which language has the biggest vocabulary". I do think there are more demanding languages, take Japanese for example. Different level of politeness can mean a totally different word for the same meaning. Or at least that's how I understand it, I don't know much about Japanese ;) But you can examine these things with frequency lists and how much coverage of the corpus the top X give you. Edited by daegga on 04 November 2014 at 11:56pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| daegga Tetraglot Senior Member Austria lang-8.com/553301 Joined 4307 days ago 1076 posts - 1792 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, Norwegian Studies: Danish, French, Finnish, Icelandic | Message 390 of 438 15 November 2014 at 1:32pm | IP Logged |
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might be interesting for some of you:
Språkteigen spesial two hours about Scandinavian intercomprehension and its pitfalls a joint radio program with three hosts from the 3 different countries 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5133 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 391 of 438 23 November 2014 at 10:35am | IP Logged |
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November Challenge
In the last of our cultural challenges, we’re going to learn something about Nordic “high-brow” music. Actually I don’t know the right English term for what I have in mind. In Italy we have the concept of “musica colta”, which doesn’t encompass only classical music in its wider sense (from early through baroque, classical proper, romantic to modern and contemporary music) but also other genres such as jazz and anything that’s not popular or commercial. Let’s put it this way: it’s the kind of music one can listen to on BBC Radio 3 or RAI Radio 3. We had a musical challenge back in March with the lyrics of a pop-song so now it’s time for something more sophisticated. The challenge is to read up on anything about “high-brow” Nordic music, from specific singers to directors from composers to orchestras, from specific operas to jazz players… it’s your choice. Alternative Challenge For those who don’t like the official challenge, there’s the option to do a different challenge: summarize a movie, a book, a short story, an article in your TL. Deadline: 14 December 2014. PS. I looked it up in Wikipedia and found out that the English term for “musica colta” is “art music” (also formal music, serious music, erudite music, legitimate music). 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5133 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 392 of 438 29 November 2014 at 5:18pm | IP Logged |
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November Challenge: Scandinavian Art Music
Edvard Grieg var en kompositör från Norge. Han var en företrädare för den senromantiken. Han föddes 1843 i Bergen och dog där 1907. Han studerade musik vid Leipzigs konservatorium där han skrev tiolalet verk. Grieg gav sin första konsert 1861 och på 1860-talet var han länge på konsertresor i Skandinavien, Tyskland, Italien, Frankrike, England och Ryssland. Norska folkmusiken och norska naturen präglar Griegs kompositioner och gör honom till en nationalromantiker. Det betyder att han spelade en viktig roll i utvecklingen av den norska nationalidentiteten. Peer Gynt är musiken Grieg komponerade till Ibsens pjäs med samma namn som hade premiär 1876 i Oslo (som kallades Christiania på den tiden). Från musiken valde Grieg ut åtta av satserna som han utgav som Svit No. 1, Op. 46, och Svit No. 2, Op. 55. Ett par av dessa satser har tagit plats i populärkulturen: I bergakungens sal och Morgonstämning har arrangerats av många artister. Det finns, till exempel, en jazztolkning (Duke Ellington) och en rocktolkning (The Who) av I bergakungens sal och båda styckena använts ofta i TV- och radioreklam och som filmmusik. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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