The Versatility of English

[Noemon]

I was talking to somebody today about languages, and they asserted that modern English was more versatile than other languages.  Their argument was that because of its history--germanic roots, heavy French influence thanks to William the Conquorer, long exposure and close proximity to Celtic languages, and its adoption as a trade language in modern times--English allowed greater nuance of experssion, in general, than other languages do.  This doesn't seem...likely to me.  I mean, all languages that are relatively healthy and mature today have had significant exposure to other languages, and probably in similar sorts of circumstances.  And while English certainly is an important trade language, it's certainly not the only one.  Borrowing and coinage happen in all languages, pretty much at the rate that new ideas are learned from other cultures or come up with natively, and if there is a topic of particular interest to speakers of a given language, they'll generally develop a more nuanced vocabulary to deal with that subject (German with philosophy, for example).  The person I was talking to is a polyglot, though, whereas I'm monolingual (more or less), so they have much more practical experience with other languages (all Romance, though) than I do.  Am I just misinformed?

If there's anyplace I can turn for thoughts on this, it's here.    So...thoughts?

[rivka]

How can English be more versatile? The subjunctive is in danger of being killed of by benign neglect, no one respects the "less" v. "fewer" distinction . . . !



If they meant that English has more synonyms and more individual words than many other languages, I believe that has some basis in fact. (One source that seems to support my recollection)

[Tante Shvester]

I don't like that there aren't words in English for things that I want to say, so I have to describe them instead of name them.

But I guess you get that in other languages as well.  In every language other than English there are tons of things I don't know the names for, but that's because I don't know those languages.

[Porter]

I don't like that there aren't words in English for things that I want to say, so I have to describe them instead of name them.

There's a certain point at which that just gets silly to have a new word for every nuance of meaning instead of using basic words and using them to describe.   Defenestration (Jon Boy's example, and a fun word to know) comes to mind.  

[Tante Shvester]

I'm not talking about nuance of meaning.  We have no word for your spouse's family.  We have to call that relationship "mother-in-law", "father-in-law" etc.  We have no word to distinguish between blood-relation aunt or uncle vs. one by marriage.  We have to say,"my mother's sister" or "my mother's brother's wife" to clarify the meaning.  We can distinguish between boys and girls, aunts and uncles, grandmothers and grandfathers, mother and fathers, but not between male and female cousins.

We don't have a word for that dent on your upper lip.  For Pete's sake!  It's right in the middle of your face!  How come we never got around to naming that?  We have a name for all the other parts of the face.

We have no word for that homey feeling that you get when you come in from work, take off your shoes, and can finally be at ease.

We have no word for that comfortable lazy feeling that makes us feel as if it is too much effort to reach for the remote control to change the channel, so we just linger in that state watching something we don't like rather than disturb it.  Because once disturbed, it is hard to achieve again.  What's the name for that feeling?  There is none in English.

[Tante Shvester]

English also lacks words to describe flavors.  We don't have a word to describe that puckery chalkiness that you get from eating an unripe persimmon.  We don't have a word to describe the characteristic taste of meat, besides "meatiness", which isn't really right.  We don't have a word to describe the explosive sensation you get from eating horseradish or wasabi.  It's not "sharp" or "bitter" or "hot".  It's something else that we don't have a name for.

[Noemon]

If they meant that English has more synonyms and more individual words than many other languages, I believe that has some basis in fact. (One source that seems to support my recollection)
 

That was definitely a large part of their argument.  Thanks rivka!

[Noemon]

Is that (the article rivka linked to) right?  Does English really have 6 times more words than French, 5 times more than Russian, and ~3 times more than German?

[pooka]

One evidence of this would be that an English to French Dictionary is much thicker than a French to English dictionary.

But precise word counts are a tricky thing to come by.

I heard a "Word of the year" on the radio today (just before the news that Alex Trebek had a heart attack) which was "root" meaning to do well in a videogame or something like that.

One argument for language being alive is that it responds to survival pressures and mutates.  English is simply a mutant.  My Latin teacher called it "The Bastard Tongue" (when she wasn't singing mocking songs about me during my all too frequent absences, I mean, I did miss 40 days that year.)  I think of it more as Franken tongue, or possibly Tur-Duc-tongue.  It's the club sandwich of languages.

[Porter]

We can distinguish between boys and girls, aunts and uncles, grandmothers and grandfathers, mother and fathers, but not between male and female cousins.

That would easily be solved by adding gender to all words, like primo/prima.

I'd rather the occasional inconvenience of having to use two words to say "female cousin" than then the constant inconvenience of remembering whether my shirt is a boy or a girl.

We don't have a word for that dent on your upper lip. For Pete's sake! It's right in the middle of your face! How come we never got around to naming that? We have a name for all the other parts of the face.

Isn't that called the cupid's bow?

We have no word for that homey feeling that you get when you come in from work, take off your shoes, and can finally be at ease.

We have no word for that comfortable lazy feeling ...

Speculation: I'm not sure that individual language words can keep hold of that much subtlety.  If there were such a word, unless it were rooted pretty strongly in our shared cultural understanding (and it's possible for only so many words to do so), people would start using it for things a shade off from what you're talking about.  Pretty soon its meaning would really be nothing more than contentment, and we already have that word.

I heard a "Word of the year" on the radio today (just before the news that Alex Trebek had a heart attack) which was "root" meaning to do well in a videogame or something like that.

The word of the year is actually woot/w00t.

[Porter]

I'm thinking of the word love.  That's a word that has so many meanings that it's almost useless as a word.  "I love you" can mean so many things in so many situations that unless you know the context of the statement, you have no idea what that phrase actually means.

[rivka]

Is that (the article rivka linked to) right?  Does English really have 6 times more words than French, 5 times more than Russian, and ~3 times more than German?

I don't know how accurate the numbers are, but I have definitely heard them many times. I guess one question is how complete dictionaries tend to be in each country. Keep in mind that France has a government agency that determines which words are acceptable, so pretty much all slang would presumably be omitted from their official dictionaries.

[Porter]

I wonder if it's really fair to count all of the Oxford Unabridged as part of the English Language.  If you take a small group of well-educated people like, say, the folks in this thread, the percentage of words in the OU that are known well enough for us all to be able to communicate with each other with them is going to be tiny.  

[Neutros the Radioactive Dragon]

I guess "w00t" just made it into Websters today...

[Amilia]

We have no word for that comfortable lazy feeling that makes us feel as if it is too much effort to reach for the remote control to change the channel, so we just linger in that state watching something we don't like rather than disturb it. Because once disturbed, it is hard to achieve again. What's the name for that feeling? There is none in English.

I call it zoning.

[pooka]

I ran across this bit in wikipedia about an apparent deficiency in English.  The fact is, English has many many words for "know" but none of them are used discretely to mean specific kinds of knowing.  I'd also question if the uses of these words are discrete in the languages described:

Many (but not all) philosophers thus think there is an important distinction between "knowing that" and "knowing how", with epistemology primarily interested in the former. This distinction is recognised linguistically in many languages but not in English.

In French (as well as in Portuguese and Spanish), for example, to know a person is 'connaître' ('conhecer' / 'conocer'), whereas to know how to do something is 'savoir' ('saber' in both Portuguese and Spanish). In Greek language the verbs are ? (gnorízo) and ? (kséro), respectively. In Italian the verbs are 'conoscere' and 'sapere' and the nouns for 'knowledge' are 'conoscenza' and 'sapienza', respectively. In the German language, it is exemplified with the verbs "kennen" and "wissen." "Wissen" implies knowing as a fact, "kennen" implies knowing in the sense of being acquainted with and having a working knowledge of. But neither of those verbs do truly extend to the full meaning of the subject of epistemology.

[Jonathon]

To address the first post, I'd call that sort of view of one's language highly linguocentric. If you made those sort of statements about the English people rather than the English language, people would call you a racist.

In my experience, people who make those kinds of statements about the perfectness of English usually don't have much experience with foreign languages. Sure, we may have a larger vocabulary than other languages, but that's only one way to measure a language. Our language is rather impoverished when it comes to grammatical cases and verb conjugations, for one thing.

[Jonathon]

We don't have a word for that dent on your upper lip. For Pete's sake! It's right in the middle of your face! How come we never got around to naming that? We have a name for all the other parts of the face.

Isn't that called the cupid's bow?

I believe that's used to describe the shape of the upper lip, not just the dent. The only word I know for the dent is "philtrum." Of course, I always forget it and have to look it up again, so I guess I don't really know it.

[Jonathon]

pooka: In French, connaître and savoir are indeed distinct. I believe the same is true of the German wissen and kennen, too. English used to have the distinction between wit and know, but wit fell out of use and know took over.

[dkw]

We don't have a word for that dent on your upper lip.  For Pete's sake!  It's right in the middle of your face!  How come we never got around to naming that?  We have a name for all the other parts of the face.
 

Nasolacrimal groove.

Edit:  no, wait, that's something else.

[Porter]

pooka: In French, connaître and savoir are indeed distinct. I believe the same is true of the German wissen and kennen, too. English used to have the distinction between wit and know, but wit fell out of use and know took over.

I got used to using those two words (actually, it was conhecer and saber, but same diff), and honestly, I haven't missed having that distinction in English.

One thing that I really did miss was the second person plural, which is why I started using y'all.  I lived my whole life in Texas and Oklahoma without picking up on that word, but two years speaking a Romantic language and I loved it.

[Jonathon]

dkw: Infranasal depression?

[Noemon]

ffft.  Your mom's an infranasal depression.

[Jonathon]

 

[Porter]

I always get one this time of year.