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Sunday, January 20, 2019
Fact of the Day: Largest Vocabulary
Due to the Norman Conquest and the arrival of Old French/Latin based words, English (a Germanic language) has the most words of any language.
Arabic doesn't have such a strong tendency to absorb words from other languages as English does. In fact, as languages go, Arabic has an unusually low number of foreign loan words. Aside from French, English has absorbed a vast amount of Latin and Greek roots which are our main source of new technical terms. The English-speaking world is a major center of cultural and technological innovation and is constantly generating new words for all the new things it creates. The Arabic word-formation system is potentially very productive, but it doesn't have the same occasion to generate many new words for things.
But we give back too. English words are infiltrating into a lot of other language -- even back into French itself, much to the annoyance of French purists.
20 comments:
Hi! I think so too.
Interesting! However, I've heard that Finnish has the most words for different kind of snow, hah! :)
xxx
E from Helsinki, Finland
http://www.elisabethrundlof.com/
No wonder it confuses many
Interesting, love that lettering
We steal from everybody!
What about Arabic?
https://en.rehitu.com
I really wondered why English was such a frikked-up language. I guess we can blame the French :-D
You've barely scratched the origin of all the words in English.
Doesn't surprise me.
An interesting thing to know.
I didn't know that!
I'm glad I speak it. :-)
Arabic doesn't have such a strong tendency to absorb words from other languages as English does. In fact, as languages go, Arabic has an unusually low number of foreign loan words. Aside from French, English has absorbed a vast amount of Latin and Greek roots which are our main source of new technical terms. The English-speaking world is a major center of cultural and technological innovation and is constantly generating new words for all the new things it creates. The Arabic word-formation system is potentially very productive, but it doesn't have the same occasion to generate many new words for things.
But we give back too. English words are infiltrating into a lot of other language -- even back into French itself, much to the annoyance of French purists.
And such a pity that English speaking world "so-called" leaders can't put a sentence together correctly! I wonder to whom I refer??????????????
Colin
This is definitely interesting!
Many of students were Mexican and trying to teach English was crazy. I told them that English is a big pot of stew.
That's interesting to know, thank you.
All the best Jan
English has some crazy rules....must be hard to learn.
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