Difficult vocab in English and Chinese

[Guest Yau]

I read The Economist every week, enjoy it anyway. But i always feel uncomfortable with their plenty of uncommon vocab and jargons, like cavern, repose, sublime, corporeal, hartshorn, cleft, kindred, manacle, etc.

Some words seem easy, like cleft and repose, but i just can't understand ANY of them without checking dictionary. (not to mention foreign vocab in the magazine, like "je ne texte rien"[appeared in the last issue] )

However, when i read a chinese essay which has lots of jargons , the problem is quite different. I may not master the concept, but i understand at least a part of it. e.g. 出血性結膜炎 compared with Hemorrhagic Conjunctivitis; and Non-proliferation Treaty with 擴散條約.

As usual, how much vocab a native english speaker can understand? Is it possible that they understand every word, at least, appeared on the magazine like The Economist and Time?

[geraldc]

Don't worry, English is my first language, my degree was in Economics and I still have to occasionally resort to the dictionary when reading the Economist. This week it was for the word "jeremiad", however from the context of its use I had a fairly accurate idea as to its meaning.

However in the list of words you gave as examples of uncommon vocab, I had to look up hartshorn, and it was listed as "an obsolete name for sal volatile", I then had to look up the term "sal volatile", basically another word for ammonia. Just by looking at the word, I could guess that the term had something to with deer (from the "hart" part of the word) but without consulting a dictionary, I'd have no idea as to its connection to ammonia.

In the Economist it's possible to understand all of the vocab they use, but not understand the hidden meaning or the humour etc, e.g the "Je ne texte rien" title was a pun on the title of a French song "Je ne regrette rien".

There was a discussion in the Economist's letter's page a few weeks ago, regarding their use of the term "dissing" and "bigging up". Someone my age has no problem with the terms, but someone older, not familiar with modern slang wouldn't understand them. The english language is constantly evolving, so I wouldn't worry about not understanding everyword.

The Economist is a very challenging read, and I guess that's why people like it.

[Disenchant]

As usual, how much vocab a native english speaker can understand? Is it possible that they understand every word, at least, appeared on the magazine like The Economist and Time?

A college graduate (native English speaker) will understand perhaps 2% of all English words -- this is excluding technical terms and scientific nomenclature. Understanding every word of a Time article shouldn't be too challenging, but I suppose writers for specialized publications like Economist love the thesaurus and the loanwords. I find it especially amusing when they drop in pinyin of stupendously simple vocabulary in an effort to sophisticate their writing.

[Claw]

Just 2%? That seems awfully small... where's that figure from?

[Disenchant]

I read it from one of those linguistic books -- it should be accurate. There's about a million English words (excluding technical), and knowledge of 20,000 words for a college graduate is referenced in a lot of places.

[Claw]

I don't think there are a million words in the English language (excluding technical terms and jargon). The complete Oxford English Dictionary (which I consider the authoritative source on English vocabulary) still only contains about 300,000 words, and about 20-25% of them are obselete or archaic. Only if you consider the inflected word forms does the number of words grow to 600,000 (but I'm not counting those since if one knows a word, one should be able to know its inflected forms as well).

[Disenchant]

English has no regulatory body, so you can consider the Urban Dictionary your authoritative source for all that matters. The OED is not a prescriptive source for the language -- the entries it chooses to omit does not the discount the validity of the word. And yes, inflections, prefixed, and suffixed variations are all deemed words.

[Claw]

Yes, but we're talking about the Economist -- all of the words it uses are almost certainly in the OED. If you bring in an urban dictionary, then of course you can easily get over a million words because every locale has their own slang, but it doesn't mean that a college graduate has a deficient vocabulary because he doesn't know them.

[Disenchant]

I never said anything about college graduates having deficient vocabularies. I'm just giving you the stats.

[Claw]

Perhaps deficient is the wrong word. But my main point is that stats can be misleading without context. For instance, I can make up new words (or use existing words in a new way) and start using them with people I know and after a while the use of the words may end up being extended to even larger groups of people. This is basically how slang starts.

If you have enough of this happening across the world, the English word count increases. This may cause a person who (for the sake of argument I'm just making up numbers) knew 10% of English words end up knowing only 5% because he wasn't exposed to any of those new words. But that still wouldn't affect his ability to read publications such as the Economist.

[Claw]

Ah... I missed the part where you said, "And yes, inflections, prefixed, and suffixed variations are all deemed words," so I'm going to address that too.

Say a person knows the word franchise, but has never encountered the words enfranchise, disenfranchise, enfranchisement or disenfranchisement (and apparently there's also disfranchise too, which I just encountered while looking at the dictionary to write this post). Again, the stats will end up being misleading because it may only count the fact that he knows franchise even though he would be able to figure out what the other words mean if he encounters them.

[Disenchant]

Firstly, you're operating with the notion that there is an arbitrary regulator that would regard the exampled person as knowing 10% of the English vocabulary. Such a body does not exist. Now granted, localities and circumstances would narrow the lexical parameters, but in an ideal setting, usage preferred by one group of people does not hold sway over the general populace. Of course it doesn't effect a person's capacity to read The Economist, because such publications pinpoints target audiences not exposed to unconventional lingo. I never said it did. As for franchise -- knowing the morpheme of the word (I'll call it that for now, even though it's probably not) does not mean you can decipher its variations. When I see franchise, I think of chain stores, Starbucks -- not the statutory priviledges meaning that would go along with disenfranchise and the others.

[Claw]

Firstly, you're operating with the notion that there is an arbitrary regulator that would regard the exampled person as knowing 10% of the English vocabulary. Such a body does not exist.

I never said there was such a body, nor do I believe there is one... and you were the one that first brought up numbers. What are we arguing about here? I'm arguing that because there are multiple ways to tally total English vocabulary and an individual's vocabulary knowledge, you end up with statistics such as the 2% that seem misleadingly low, espeically when the numbers are taken from disparate sources. For instance, the 1 million total vocabulary figure may include all the different word forms including prefixes, suffixes, inflections, slang, etc., but the 20,000 individual vocabulary figure might not.

As for franchise -- knowing the morpheme of the word (I'll call it that for now, even though it's probably not) does not mean you can decipher its variations. When I see franchise, I think of chain stores, Starbucks -- not the statutory priviledges meaning that would go along with disenfranchise and the others.

While I agree that knowing word roots does not automatically mean you know its variations, in most cases it's enough to decipher the meaning when you encounter them in context. The meaning of franchise that you brought up actually is a more recent extention of the original meaning (privilege) -- the privilege granted to a group to exercise certain powers of a larger corporation (such as Starbucks).

But anyway, that wasn't my point... my point was that one study may have counted those variations as words while the other study might not have.

[Disenchant]

I didn't come up with the numbers. I'm just regurgitating stuff I read. What each number explicitly entails -- I don't know, I'm not a mind reader. Your guess is good as mine. With such variance in data, I agree, there can be different conclusions, and I think there was some kind of disclaiming remark of that sort in my reading material. Now to bring the thing back on topic -- I think it's perfectly normal for even native English speakers to often see words they've never seen before, simply because English has the most prolific thesaurus of any language.

[Claw]

Okay agreed.

Going back to the original poster... so is it because of the relative difficulty in introducing new characters that new words in Chinese are often just new combinations of known characters rather than completely new words like in English?

Especially with computerized fonts now, it's nearly impossible to introduce a new character unless you add the character to all the fonts out there so that others could read it. I wish there was a way for Chinese fonts to somehow generate new characters, but I digress...

[Guest Yau]

I think the most disturbing thing about english all lie in its confusing roots. They always plug the new word directly to their language, without a proper disgest. I've heard that an english scholar said in an essay about how flexible, efficient, open-minded about english and adapt to the global environment and then he proudly claimed that more than a MILLION of vocab in English.

It may date back to the underdevelopment of early english civilization and they were over eager to introduce foreign words. This was discussed earlier here, but not going further anyway. But after a few hundred year bloom in english, they eventually have more than a million vocab, which i believe is strange and will add unnecessary troubles for either natives or foreigners.

Do we need a reform in english?

For it's a global language, i myself 'prefer' (not suggest) it has no future continous tense and past perfect, abolish all article, skip all minor differences (like countable or uncountable nouns), cancel all conjugations, systematically build up a list of agreed roots and invent the new word based on it. More importantly, change the spelling of any word that can't reflect phonetics.

In fact, is it possible that so-called 'Globalish' phenomenon will finally take a back fire on the native english, and influence them? Just like the phase 'Long Time No See' suddenly spreaded thoughout english world.

[Altair]

As usual, how much vocab a native english speaker can understand? Is it possible that they understand every word, at least, appeared on the magazine like The Economist and Time?

I think that the situation for English speakers is not much different from that of Chinese speakers. The detail is different, but I think the need for education is about the same.

cavern, repose, sublime, corporeal, hartshorn, cleft, kindred, manacle

These are indeed somewhat difficult words, but I would expect a well-read English speaker to know the meaning of all of them, except for “hartshorn.” Like Geraldc, I recognized the roots of this word, but not the meaning. This is actually one reason I would not agree with your complaint about English roots.

I do not think there is a simple correlation between how understandable words are and how they are composed. For native speakers, native English words are not necessarily easier to understand than imported ones. Out of the eight words you mentioned, three are native ones that correspond loosely to the way Chinese forms words, and five are imported ones. The only one I would expect to cause difficulties to just about everyone is the native word composed exactly in the Chinese manner.

Of the five imported words, four are composed of morphemes (i.e., words or affixes) that should be relatively transparent to educated English speakers. Although one would not be able to derive the meaning of all of them, they make it very easy to remember their meanings or to guess them from context.

(not to mention foreign vocab in the magazine, like "je ne texte rien"[appeared in the last issue] )

Using foreign quotations like this is equivalent to making a pun from an obscure quote from the Lotus Sutra. It is “insider” language. As Geraldc says, it is kind of fun for those who can figure it out. For everyone else, it is the height of snobbery. Most English speakers do not speak French. Even those who do may not have every heard the song where the words “je ne regretted rien” appears. (“Je ne regrette rien” means: “I am not sorry about anything.” It was sung by a singer (Edith Piath?) who had led a life with many ups and downs. This song expressed her defiance of conformity.) I think this song was popular over fifty years ago, maybe even outside of France; however, it would be virtually unknown to younger readers, at least in the U.S. The Economist considers itself an elite magazine and so uses somewhat elitist vocabulary and style.

出血性結膜炎 compared with Hemorrhagic Conjunctivitis; and Non-proliferation Treaty with 擴散條約

Although “hemorrhagic” is not daily vocabulary, I would expect any college educated reader to know what a “hemorrhage” is. "Conjunctivitis" would probably puzzle anyone not in the medical field. The reality is that “hemorrhagic conjunctivitis” is technical language not needed by people outside the field. I do not know a common term for “hemorrhagic conjunctivitis,” but “hemorrhagic” is more or less the same as “bleeding” and “conjunctivitis” is probably the same as “pink eye.” Such use of technical language is not really that different from Chinese use of similar terms in traditional Chinese medicine. I occasionally need to use terms like 丹田, 会阴, and 命门 for Taijiquan, but could not figure out the meanings of these terms from the characters.

I don't think there are a million words in the English language (excluding technical terms and jargon).

I agree with this point, but would argue much more strongly. The concept of word is very poorly defined in linguistics. Comparisons between languages usually have more polemical value than anything else. If you consider to be words anything that is written between two spaces, I could probably write any verb in Spanish, Portuguese, or Arabic in a hundred different forms and easily pass the asserted million-word count in English.

Then again, what does one do about Greek, which is now written in "words," but once was written largely without any spacing or punctuation? How about "a 'spot' on a shirt," "a 'spot' of tea," "'spot' the error," "they always 'spot' problems," "my favorit 'spot' for a picnic," and "spot me ten bucks"? Is each occurrence of "spot" a separate word or just a single word?

I think there is some validity to the frequent statements in the literature that English has a relatively large vocabulary, that it is relatively friendly to imported words, and that English expression has been enriched by this. One can, of course, have too much of a good think. For instance, what possible use is there for a word like "risible"?

I think the most disturbing thing about english all lie in its confusing roots. They always plug the new word directly to their language, without a proper disgest.

The unfortunate reality for language learners is that English has adapted a large amount of the roots existing in French and Latin (and maybe ancient Greek). To speak high-level, refined English, one must know these roots. I think this is comparable to the status of Classical Chinese in Mandarin. One can speak basic Mandarin without knowing any classical vocabulary or grammar, but one cannot read sophisticated material without some facility with classical expression. If you grow up in either society, I think most of what one needs is simply picked up through the educational system and daily life. If you do not, you have to seek some sort of shortcut or remedial work. For instance, there are books in English that list definitions of common affixes adopted from other languages.

For it's a global language, i myself 'prefer' (not suggest) it has no future continous tense and past perfect, abolish all article, skip all minor differences (like countable or uncountable nouns), cancel all conjugations

I can certainly relate to these feelings; however, I would disagree with some of the details. Mandarin actually has loosely comparable constructions to each of these things, except for conjugations. In addition, Mandarin has its own obligatory, and sometimes arbitrary, distinctions that are unnecessary or simpler in English. If you eliminate any of these seemingly superfluous structures in either language, you end up leaving gaps that are inevitable filled in other ways.

What languages give with one hand, they usually take with the other. For instance, although the form of Mandarin nouns does not vary according to number, noun phrases very often do. For each noun, one must memorize an often somewhat arbitrary measure word that can pop up even when their is no need to count. Even though Classical Chinese had no articles, they have crept into Mandarin in expressions that virtually require 一个 or 那个. They have already arrived in Cantonese disguised as measure words. (My Cantonese is very weak, but I think this is an example: 個表好貴啦 Go biú hóu gwai lā. (The watch is expensive.)

More importantly, change the spelling of any word that can't reflect phonetics.

Many native speakers would agree with you. Here is an interesting site that offers a well-thought out scheme. http://members.aol.com/Fanetiks/

The problem with such schemes is that they raise many of the issues described in the forums in defense of 汉子 hanzi and against widespread adoption of a "Chinese" alphabet to write Mandarin. Would the gains be worth the cost? Could any reform succeed against entranced culturally-based resistance? If it ain't really broke, why fix it?

[Claw]

Many native speakers would agree with you. Here is an interesting site that offers a well-thought out scheme. http://members.aol.com/Fanetiks/

I don't agree. The English spelling system is not a true phonetic spelling system nor should it be. It's has morphological characteristics that contribute to understandability that would be lost in a true phonetic/phonemic system.

Take the morpheme /ed/ for instance that is used to denote past tense for most verbs in English. If you actually listen to different words with the /ed/ ending, you will find that /ed/ exhibits itself using three different phonemes, [d] for words ending in vowels or voiced consonants, [t] for words ending in unvoiced consonants, and [ed] for words ending in d or t. In a true phonemic system, you would have to spell /ed/ differently depending on which word you use it in, for instance, using the phonetic spelling rules on the site you listed: backed becomes baakt, bagged becomes baagd, and batted becomes baated. It's not very clear that the words are all past tense anymore, is it?

Then there are variations of words that change the pronounciation of the root word. In English spelling, the root word is still spelled intact, but it would be completely different in a phonemic system. For instance: maniac becomes maeneeaak but maniacal becomes menieaakl. You no longer see that the two words are related.

EDIT: Not to mention that different dialects of English would result in different spellings. True, there are already minor spelling differences between American and British spelling, but if a phonemic system were put into place, it would cover probably half the vocabulary at least.

I find this somewhat akin to replacing written Chinese characters with pinyin (though not quite as radical) since you lose all the morphological aspects of the writing language when you do so.

[Altair]

In a true phonemic system, you would have to spell /ed/ differently depending on which word you use it in, for instance, using the phonetic spelling rules on the site you listed: backed becomes baakt, bagged becomes baagd, and batted becomes baated. It's not very clear that the words are all past tense anymore, is it?

I, myself, am neutral about radical phoneticism. You raise what is certainly a valid concern. To play devil's advocate, however, can one say that these words are not easily understandable? I was able to read this guy's text with relative ease with no more than 30 seconds worth of training. I cannot honestly say that obscured morphology was a difficulty.

Also, English already does this sort of thing in a non-systematic way. Consider the morphological change in the pair "lead" vs. "led" compared with "(I) read (it now)" vs. "(I) read (it yesterday)." What about "cleave" and "cleft," to use one of Yau's examples. There are many Latin roots that have problems: "incisive" vs. "incident" and "excessive" vs. "exceed." Bizarre spellings like "doubt" and "debt" were historically inaccurate attempts to get around this issue; however, they cause their own problems.

Not to mention that different dialects of English would result in different spellings. True, there are already minor spelling differences between American and British spelling, but if a phonemic system were put into place, it would cover probably half the vocabulary at least.

I had this initial reaction as well, but then considered that it is sort of cute to "hear" someone's accent through their writing. I was able to pick it regional features in the accent of the author of this scheme and had a few "ahas." Reading text in an accent definitely changes the experience. Imagine reading Shakespeare "in a true Elizabethan accent." The poetry would really come alive. Now imagine reading it in an urban American accent. This might be quite jarring.

All in all, I would agree that radical phoneticism raises its own set of problems; however, I cannot say that any are insurmountable. The question for me is whether I would prefer those problems to English's current ones. The political fallout alone would probably be crushing.

I find this somewhat akin to replacing written Chinese characters with pinyin (though not quite as radical) since you lose all the morphological aspects of the writing language when you do so.

I think this is an overstatement, as I have discussed above. Certainly, morphology gives way to the phonetic principle, but it does not disappear entirely. Yet another example of what has already happened in English is how we treat "regular" plurals. This is analogous to your point about "ed" endings. Morphologically, we should simply write all "regular" plurals with final "s"; instead, "pseudo-phoneticism" has won out to eliminate spellings such as: "bushs" and "partys." As an English speaker, I can understand why such spellings would cause difficulty and why some accomodation to phoneticism improves intelligibility in these cases. Differnt strokes for different "fokes." (I must admit I find such spellings horrifying)

All writing systems involve compromise between various principles. Deciding where to compromise involves a lot of personal taste. At the moment, I am in no rush to adopt "fanetiks" for a whole host of reasons, but I cannot dispute that the scheme is workable and that saving the time and effort of learning quirky spelling conventions would be very valuable.

Just about every major language I am aware of has gone through spelling or script reforms, sometimes on many occasions. The question is whether English is ripe for yet another one now? I have serious dawts or dowts or douts or doutes or doubts.

[Guest Yau]

i just tried to read Leaves of Grass (Leevz uv Graas) in Fanetiks system and it's so wonderful!

my pronounciation and intonation is not always the same as the native speaker, but when i read Fanetiks loudly and slowly, tried to figure out carefully about what is behind, my pronounciation suddenly sounded like the native english that i heard from my friends.

(you can also try here:

http://members.aol.com/fanetiks/leaves1.html

I think it's not feasible to replace exisitng english spelling with it, but there's a need to have an english pinyin system like this.