which language contains the most words?
 

hi everybody,

I had a discussion last night on how many words the english language contains vs. the german... I am convinced that there are more english than german words... does anybody know?

Cheers, Jakki

ebonics

Greek language has probably more words than any language

If i had to take a guess I would say German has more words than English.

most words I guess has some asian language... chinese probably...


to german - english
the Oxford English Dictionary has ~600k words listed. But there's no comparable collection for germany. The biggest one has ~200+ k words and doesn't have scientific, chemical, medical words. Scientist guess that the german language has ~400-800k words including the above mentioned.

Inuit has hundreds of words for snow.

russian has a lot
also Persian (farcy)
i would guess Chinease has a lot too

my guess is russian has the most words

Cool article. I have one of Pinker's books but not that one. I'll order it.

English definately has more words than german. English uses some four words where the German equivalent is one great long one. like 'the red box with balls in it' is gonna be something like 'grecheshlefertosen'.

Wait I just argued the opposite of what I intended... cos that would give German the more words..

bah.


(going to fuck myself)

Some numbers for English.
http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2001/JohnnyLing.shtml

500k-1M, 650-750k,616.5k,450k.

What are some other similarly high estimates for other languages?

Mr. Athan Anagnostopoulos, who (along with his wife) established and operates the well-regarded Greek Institute in Cambridge MA, has spent the last 6 years assembling Greek words over the 3,000-year compendium of the Greek language. So far, he has gathered more than 50 million words from the time of Homer to present.
http://www.prometheas.org/newsletter...newsletter.doc


nice hobby

If you dig around at http://www.linguistlist.org/ you will find they claim that English has most words in its dictionaries. 500,000 in the current unabridged Oxford Dictionary is about double the number of what many recognise as the next most extensive. There is some debate about which language that is, but Spanish seems to be the most popular choice.

Dictionary size is not a wholly accurate guide to vocabulary size (some countries work harder at producing extensive dictionaries). But since English is so far ahead on that score, it seems unlikely that it does not have the biggest vocabulary.

of course we use a fraction of the total words our dictionary has. Probably chinese must use the most. I think it can take you close to a decade to learn chinese.

Any word count estimates?

i'll check at google,im curious too

i remember there was a study that took place in various countries regarding the # of words we use in our day life. The number was hilarious, something like 5k to 15k words i think

i think the language with the most words is
DOUBLE DUTCH

and most of the people on this board are fluent in it

English is such a poor language

it was spanish, untill we added "Foshizel" to the english language.

The original numbers I heard said that English had by far the most words, with approximately 300,000... The next runner-up was German with 60,000.

The reason should be obvious. English counts as its roots Greek, Latin, French, and German. We have so many words for the same things (and subtle distinctions), and continue to borrow words from many languages. Clearly the vocabulary will be huge.

Try japanese

chinese, I think :)

German certainly has one advantage: you put 3 to 4 words together and you have a new word... Works at least in most cases...

Just think of all the german words english adopted during the last decades, like 'waldsterben' (die-back of forests due to polution) - simple: 'wald" (forest) was an existing word, and as soon as it started to die you just add this... voilà: a new word!

Disadvantage: in german you might have words that long that in a normal newspaper layout they run over three lines with two hyphons ~ easy to lose track :Graucho

Well, Mr. GeorgTH if you put jumping and jack together it also means something else... do you know what a jumpingjack is? :-)

There are many words in both german and english that can be put together and you have a new meaning.... so not clear at all, I guess...

Cheers, Jakki

don't know :) never counted the words

******talk?