Name: Tess
Home: St. Louis
Wordy
Quick--how many words are there in English?
A site called Global Language Monitor claims that as of right now there are 988,968 words in English. However, in Slate.com, Oxford English Dictionary editor-at-large Jesse Sheidlower raises some sensible questions about how we count words, pointing out, "if you were to count every number between 0 and 999,999 as a word, you'd have a cool million right there—and still have the rest of the English language to account for." So, readers, what do you think--what constitutes a word?
A site called Global Language Monitor claims that as of right now there are 988,968 words in English. However, in Slate.com, Oxford English Dictionary editor-at-large Jesse Sheidlower raises some sensible questions about how we count words, pointing out, "if you were to count every number between 0 and 999,999 as a word, you'd have a cool million right there—and still have the rest of the English language to account for." So, readers, what do you think--what constitutes a word?
posted by Tess | 5:10 PM
2 Comments:
What a fascinating question...I think it can't be just letters strung together which we usually believe constitute words. Think of the coos and oohs and aahs of babyhood, first conversation with a toddler, the grunts of someone who can communicate and is mentally aware, but unable to verbalize the way a speaking person is able to do...
Hmmmm...
Is "hmmmm" a word?
Hh
Interesting, because when I was in high school I read a linguistics article that said the English language contains roughly 500,000 words, with a few hundred thousand extra that belong almost exclusivly to the scientific community (think all the medical jargon on "House" or "ER"). Now I am curious whether the article you read includes both categories or whether it makes that distinction, as well, and our language has just gained 400,000 in 1992. It is possible, in theory, because of how adaptable our language is (and therefore how frustrating it is to learn).
Anyway, I wasn't able to read the whole article without logging in. Does the writer include scientific words or slang - foreign slang from the Commonwealth countries would add tremendously to the vocab count. I looked up "kangaroo" on wikipedia the other day for my girls and there are a ton of words there - all Aussie slang - for the females, males, etc. Multiply that by all manner of individual national idiosyncracies...
By comparison, that same article I read in high school mentioned that French and Spanish, by comparison, only have roughly 100,000 and 150,000 words respectively. That five to one ratio must make English novels translated into French or Spanish just... flat. No nuance!
Post a Comment
<< Home