I disagree…just because we “use” the word does not change that word’s origin…particularly with medical terminology…not that long ago all science and medicine was conducted in Latin…not english. One had to learn latin in order to be in academics…only until the recent history was it made more understandable to the lay person by having words that they used incorporated into the medical terminology. Do you deny the fact that academia used latin to exclude the common person from participating in their studies? they used a “foreign” language in order to make it more “academic” like the romans did…lol…but anyhow, it was in Latin not english, we have just incorporated those words…I don’t feel they count for the simple reason that I guarantee if you ask most people what latin terms mean, they will look at you like a cow looks at the slaughterhouse…completely oblivious. so no I don’t buy the argument that those are “english” vocabulary or “words” or whatever moniker you would like to use…(hey look at that…I bet moniker is a german descended word…but you never know, I guess it’s english since i used it…) it’s like i previously pointed out…is the term “OK” a part of every language out there now? everyone in the world is familiar and uses this term…does that make it a part of their language? I don’t think so, since it is used in the same manner that english devised for it, it retains it’s “englishness” if you will. now, if you take a foreign word and then make your own usage out of them separate from the original intent, then I believe that would become a part of your language…a good example of this would be Creole French…yeesh, that is definitely not french though they use many of the same words, it has evolved into something very unique unto itself.
and as far as the native vs. foreign speakers…that is nonsense. Yes english is derived from other languages…just as with everything else with the west…we’re nothing more than mutts…borrowing pieces of everything from everybody, and throwing out the parts we don’t like. Sounds pretty lame to me…especially to do that and then egotistically claim that such a young language is the largest…bah, ridiculous…nothing but pretentious western ego trying to puff up it’s feathers and look bigger than it really is.
My bad and apoligies in order. I sensed a jocular tone in your first post re: Danish and compund words. So my irony didn’t go through, and I’m sorry.
Yes, I read your whole post, and my joke was that there is quite a lot of animosity between Denmark and Sweden. We always considered Danes our kid brothers. But all of a sudden, they have better economy, lower unemployment and a stronger currency.
This patronizing aspect from Swedes has not been good. And one response is that Danes often refer to Sweden as ‘Asien’, considering that the Scandinavian peninsula is attached, via Finland, to Russia, whereas Denmark, another peninsula, is attached to mainland Europe.
Again, I’m sorry.
> apoligies in order.
Perfectly alright, no need to apologise, guess I didn’t get you were joking.
> animosity between Denmark and Sweden
Animosity is perhaps not the correct word I think; deep, burning, everlasting hate more like it! ^M^M^M^M I mean a bit of friendly rivalry, much like what exist between the US and Canada I suspect. I never heard Swedes been referred to as Asiens, I thought you might have referred to Finns because of all the language bits that pest this discussion on English history :rolleyes:, but now you mention it I can see how it’s fitting and shall immediately take it up. That would be “Asier” in Danish, which have that extra advantage of simultaneous meaning pickled cucumbers. I also never heard of the ‘kid brother’ part, seems there’s a whole bunch of things I know nothing about – that would make you hmm… Big Brother 
(Mona Salin as O’Brien does indeed have a true ring to it 
)
Ps. You shouldn’t feel inferior, just because we’re nicer, cleverer, stronger, richer and better looking – on second thought; go right ahead.
Joe_iguana, you’re trying to impose several distinctions that are utterly artificial. Language is not a popularity contest, so the fact that only a small minority of the speakers might understand a particular word doesn’t keep that word out of the language. How many speakers you need is certainly a conundrum - but once you’ve got a group that’s millions strong, like the entire medical profession, I suspect most editors would agree that a word is full English, especially if it’s been in use for a few years.
My slightly educated guess is that you’d look at a matrix of breadth of use and length of time - the more common a word becomes, the less time it needs to be called a full member of a language. Remember perestroika and glasnost? Did they join the language or not? I’d say they did - their fame outweighs the brevity of their stay. They’re probably already gone, perhaps to be dusted off at some future date should they become handy again.
Of course, I’d nod my head at a well-developed argument saying they never joined the language, too.
And saying a language has the largest vocabulary is not mere egotism. It makes an enormous difference once you try to teach that language, as I did some years ago. My Japanese students wanted to rip their hair out at the number of slight variations we have in English for the same concepts. My impression is that Europeans have similar reactions - although that Spanish example above is remarkable, I’m not sure it’s typical.
my god…did you even read my statement…you yourself start blathering about perestroika and glasnost…but are those not russian terms? why should the fact that we use them make them a part of english? How can we count them if they are not changed from the original meaning? there has been nothing NEW added…it is still essential a russian term, much like blitzkrieg is a german term that is frequently used in english literature. Now. as far as foreign people learning english…yes I have heard it is very difficult to learn, but not because of the Huge nature of english, but because of the consistent lack of structure. Most languages have very well defined structures to create new words by use of endings…whereas the english language is kind of a hodge-podge of everything from around the world. IMHO I feel english is more of a collective language than any other in the world due to this fact. But it does NOT make it the largest, the most difficult, perhaps, but not the largest.
As far as those “several distinctions that are utterly artificial”, you obviously weren’t reading my posting very closely or you would have realized that this was something we call “analogy”…hmm…striking idea, make use of an example to portray how people think…my god, what next!!? lol. I was trying to show how everyone who’s supporting the english is better theory has this almost patriotic fervour that is nuts to say the least. Remember…it wasn’t that long ago that people considered english to be the most “Vulgar” of languages and hence the popularity of Latin based languages for study.
Now, for anyone else who would like to argue with me about medical terminology…I ask this…do medical students have to take classes to understand Latin? hmmmm…I’ll leave it at that.
as a side note…here’s an example of foreign students(a chinese friend of mine) having trouble with the english language…
:What are you up to?..
My friend asks me…what does this mean? why are you “Up”?..he had a hard time because that didn’t really make sense…and if you think about the literal meaning of those words in the phrase…it doesn’t make one iota of sense whatsoever…what would “What are you Down to?” mean?..lol I found it personally entertaining. English is so messed up.
So words like, say, “dominion” “realm” “attorney” “prison” and “state”, etcetera, aren’t really English because they came from French? “Badger” isn’t English because itcame from Celtic? Ditto for German loanwords, like “zeppelin” and yes, “blitzkrieg” (or just “blitz”, as in the football play). If it has the largest vocabulary, how is it not the largest language?
pravnik…those french words also came from latin…hmm funny how much borrowing has been going on for centuries. I don’t think you can say a word is a “part” of a language until it is being used in a unique way from the orginal. Blitz could be seen as possibly crossing over into the realm of english, but I believe blitzkrieg can not. and besides, german and english are related, so you can’t distinguish as much as say english and chinese.
Latin based languages all have similiar words…spanish and italian speakers can for the most part understand each other without too much trouble, whereas the snooty french make it a little more difficult. lol. so then all the words we are saying that english has…well …gee so do all those european languages…why aren’t they just as if not bigger than english?..that’s where we get most of our words right…curious…and no one has even mentioned african languages…
Are you telling me armor wearing men on horseback used to be called KANIGGETS?
:eek:
My little book says the pronunciation of the “gh” was sort of like the “ch” in the Scottish “loch” or German “ich”, so I guess it was closer to “kinnichts”. It goes on with an interesting thing about how the first English printer, William Caxton, froze spelling that had previously changed to reflect changes in pronunciation; we spell today essentially the way Caxton did.
I can’t think of a better definition of an English word. Can you?
Well, that certainly a different definition, but is it better?
Obviously, I don’t think so. For one thing, someone would have to know what a word meant in its original language in order to know if it’s English or still foreign. They can’t just trust to the fact that they know what it means and that just about everyone he talks to will know what it means. Or if it’s a technical term, those in the appropriate profession will know what it means.
How about the word sauna? As far as I know, its meaning is the same in both Finnish and English (also incidently, most other European languages). But ask 100 English speakers if it’s an English word and the vast majority will say yes. Yet your definition would deny its Englishosity.
lol “englishosity”?..I like that…are you related to George W Bush? He makes up words too.
lol…sorry that was too easy. but I do have an interesting note…I do believe that all new words from the past half century are most definitely originating from english…and for one reason…it is simply a matter of who is in power at the time. Look at all the words that have come into being in just the past 20 years…most of them have to do with technology…and we’re the main leaders of the technological age so it follows that most of the related terms come from us…kind of like history…the winners write the history books and the language standards.
I have a word for you linguists out there…what is the origination of the word “computer”…I can’t really break it down except for compute…and then add an “r”…but that seems ridiculiously simple and somewhat silly. but I would not be surprised. after George W. is in office…yeesh. talk about linguistically challenged!
Computer, like most words starting with com- and con-, comes from Latin. Breaking it down, it’s com- with + putare to consider.
BTW, earlier, you wanted to know where moniker comes from. It happens to be one of the very few English words borrowed from Shelta, a language spoken in Ireland by Travellers.
joe_iguana,
Nobody said English was better, they said it was bigger. The lexicon.
German and English words are plenty distinguishable to a linguist, I promise you. The languages haven’t been mutually intelligible for well over a thousand years.
So then the word “language” is not an English word? It was borrowed from Old French… it meant language in French just as it means language in English now.
A word becomes a part of the language when a lot of speakers of that language use it. It really is that simple. As I said before, there isn’t a single moment in time when the change occurs, there is a continuum between foreign and native. Eventually the word is considered totally native, even when it’s obvious that it didn’t come from Old English. Tsunami is an example… it’s a Japanese word, most people can guess that, but it’s an English word too, no doubt.
It’s not a question of belief, but fact. English is responsible for a large number of technology-related terms, but all languages constantly coin new terms, and they aren’t all borrowed from other languages. Your belief is untrue.
-fh
Joe_iguana wrote:
But it does. English uses the terms qua English terms, e.g., there is no Latin pronunciation or inflection — the terms have anglicized phonemes; the nominative, accusative, and dative cases are like English; the genitive is formed with an apostrophe and an “s”; and so on.
Joe_iguana, yes, I some did manage to slog through your badly-structured, erratic, largely punctuation-free posts (the abuse of the elipisis doesn’t count). You’re making arguments that are based not on any objective analysis of how languages work (which is difficult in the best of circumstances), but on some murky, ill-articulated feelings. This wouldn’t be so bad if at least you’d recognize it, but you appear not to. At this point, I’ll leave it to the more professional linguists to dispose of what’s left of your “reasoning.”
Thank you all for your replies. I recognize the difficulties of precisely measuring the size of a language’s vocabulary, and so will not expect a great deal more information to surface. However, I remain rather curious about Russian’s ranking in vocabulary size. As I mentioned in my original post, I have heard it said that Russian has a rather large vocabulary. I would like to know a bit about whether this statement is true or not and would greatly appreciate the assistance of someone on this board as I know virtually nothing about the Russian language and have had no success in looking for such information on the internet. If it is not true, I would also appreciate information about how such a myth would have originated.