Oxford English Dictionary

[fenlan]

??? So what?

[Jose]

I am afraid that most educated native speakers are aware of the words quintillion, sextillion and septillion at least

An English septillion, even in British English these days, is a Continental quadrillion, the Spanish "cuatrillón" that does appear in dictionaries. A Spanish "septillón", like a traditional British septillion, would be 10 raised to the 42nd power. There are no imaginable real situations for such high numbers. In fact, I would be surprised to find any quote of a real usage of a number higher than the English quintillion (Continental and traditional British trillion). The following Wikipedia article mentions the lack of real usage of most of these numbers -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_large_numbers.

That article points out that these number names exist basically because they correspond to an identifiable and extensible pattern. That is correct. If you say "septillón" in Spanish, any educated speaker would understand that it refers to a very big number that should occupy the seventh slot in the pattern that starts with millón, billón, trillón,...

As for Scots English, I know that it has been a literary language, and I read some of Robbie Burns' poems a long time ago. What I was wondering is whether Scots English words are included in the OED, since they belong to a literary language that is different from English. If all the words used by Robbie Burns do appear in the OED, that must account for a good number of entries. If all Asturian and Aragonese words were added to a dictionary of Spanish, that would raise the number of entries too.

You are right that having two words for "olive" or "to be" does not significantly add to the expressiveness of a language

I said that about "olive" or about the two words for Saturday in German, but "to be" is a totally different case. "Ser" and "estar" are two different concepts that are merged into one single "to be" verb in other languages. Having "ser" and "estar" does give extra shades of meaning to simple attributive sentences in Spanish and Portuguese. This doesn't mean that other languages, like English, don't have other means to achieve the same semantic values, but it is an expressive asset of Spanish and Portuguese (unlike the various terms, both in Spanish and Portuguese, for olives or pineapples).

As for the synonyms of "sky", I can't think of any Spanish words apart from "cielo" and "firmamento". I don't have any dictionaries or books in Spanish here at my new home in England, so I can't check any reference tool other than online ones. The fact that one particular word has more synonyms in one language than in another doesn't mean that that will be the case with any other word. The reverse will surely be true with many words. It is indeed possible that English may have more synonyms than Spanish in actual use, but I haven't found any clear evidence to support this.

The subjunctive is a VITAL part of educated modern English

I wouldn't really call it a vital part. These days, most people say "if I was" rather than "if I were" and, in British English, "I recommend that it should be done" rather than "I recommend that it be done". Anyway, I was referring to the fact that Spanish has a present subjunctive and a past subjunctive that don't have a counterpart in English. Portuguese also uses the future subjunctive (old-fashioned in Spanish) and even a personal infinitive, unique among romance languages. Speakers of Spanish and Portuguese may feel that an English sentence like "I hope he will come" somehow doesn't stress the hypothetical value of the "he will come" part in the way a subjunctive would do in those languages.

I am not trying to say that Spanish or Portuguese or my beloved Asturian, the language of my ancestors, are more expressive than English. Only that different languages have different ways of expressing things and anyone claiming that one language is better in any sense than another one is treading on dangerous and sensitive ground. I also feel that I can talk about this subject with some confidence because my knowledge of English is reasonably good, and I have read quite a lot of literature in English. I have also worked as a translator in the past, so I am familiar with the pitfalls when trying to find correspondences between English and Spanish and Portuguese.

Finally, it is also a bit annoying being told that one's native language is less expressive than English by somebody who doesn't know the language, nor has any interest in it.

[fenlan]

Jose, you are right that I have never seen a real need to use the word quintillion, but my point was just that native speakers are aware of it. They probably know that it is 1,000 quadrillion. As to whether Scots is contained in the OED, it seems that only a few well-known words, such as "nae" for "no" are in there, possibly because English people are aware of them and may refer to them jocularly. I looked up "quhen" for "when" and it wasn't there. I looked up "sklyte", a word I found in the Concise Scots Dictionary and it wasn't there. It does not cover Scots very comprehensively at all, as the replacement of question words in wh- by quh- was very typical of 15th-17th century Scots.

Your post contains non sequiturs and cheap points. Please read my last post - and read it again after that. I did say that there must be some phrases in Spanish the nuances of which are difficult/impossible without a circumlocution/impossible at all to convey in English. Ser and estar would be one case in point, but as I said, this phenomenon would be multiplied many, many times in the case of Spanish to English. [ser and estar increase the lexicon by only one word.] You admitted that you cannot find any other words for sky/heaven, and as I used an online Spanish thesaurus to find the words I found, I doubt you will find any more. The reason for choosing sky/heaven is that it is pretty fundamental to poetry. It is the type of subject to be addressed in the poetry of every nation. Pick another word that expresses a subject generally likely to be addressed in poetry or literature of all nations, and I will search for synonyms for you. It seems you are reluctant to accept any evidence at all - you just dismiss the evidence. But English has so many synonyms owing to the large number of sources English can draw on.

I said "educated modern English" in my discussion of the subjunctive. You replied by telling me what lowest common denominator average usage is in the UK. English does have a subjunctive, and its usage is still preferred by educated speakers. This is really a question of grammar rather than vocabulary - your attempt to shift the question from vocabulary is noted. Yes, Spanish has an imperfect subjunctive. So what? English is hard for learners to master precisely because of its analytical nature. The way things are said and the phrases that we use idiomatically are hard for foreigners, and sometimes for English people themselves, to master! Why didn't you point this out? I, however, was talking about the lexicon! By the way, Spanish is the easiest language in the world for English people to learn. Generally speaking school children study French for 5 years before taking an O level (GCSE nowadays) and for a further 2 years before taking the A level. Spanish is generally studied for 3 years before O level and 1 year at A level, but this is merely to fit in with the design of the school curriculum; it doesn't take that long to learn Spanish. I know of someone who studied Spanish for a single year before taking the old O level, and studied Spanish in the following year for A level, thus going from nothing to A level in 2 years - compared with 7 for French. It is the simplest language I know of, other than pidgin Englishes.

It is simply not true that all languages are equally expressive. This seems to be your a priori point. You have decided in advance that this must be so in order not to "discriminate" against the speakers of any language. According to your reasoning, Papua New Guinea Pidgin Engish, which is a mother tongue to some people in that country, "must" be as expressive as any other language, for to hold otherwise would offend the native speakers. But this is an absurd approach to this question! Really, it makes not a whit of difference that you do not like it. You speak as your ancestral tongue a language with a small vocabulary. Whether you feel comfortable with that or not is not relevant to the discussion. You claim as a translator to have some "expert" knowledge of the respective sizes of the English and Spanish lexicons. Unless you have been translating English literature (by which I mean, Bronte, Dickens, Austen etc), I fail to see the relevance.

Finally, I have to comment on your last sentence, which to my mind indicated you realise that what I have been saying is right. You can only combat my points by means of a cheap argument. My knowledge of Spanish is very, very weak after 18 years in which I have not spoken it. I would not like to have to speak it or write it, but I can read it tolerably well. I have an A at A level in Spanish, but it dates back to 1987. I simply do not claim to be able to speak any Spanish at all, but where do you get off telling me I don't have any interest in Spanish at all? You are having problems dealing with the size of the Spanish lexicon. Deal with it!

[Dennis]

What is the largest chinese chinese dictionary?

I don't know because I simply don't care.

I also have no interest in the OED either.

A good medium-size English dictionary works for me when I'm reading Wuthering Heights

and the 现代汉语词典 works for me when I'm reading 家.

Can all 5 venecular classics de written in the 20.000 unicode characters?

No. esspecially if you want them to be written in simplified characters.

[fenlan]

What is the largest chinese chinese dictionary?

I don't know because I simply don't care.

I also have no interest in the OED either.

A good medium-size English dictionary works for me when I'm reading Wuthering Heights

and the 现代汉语词典 works for me when I'm reading 家.

Can all 5 venecular classics de written in the 20.000 unicode characters?

No. esspecially if you want them to be written in simplified characters.

Thanks for your message. I find the Comtemporary Chinese Dictionary short of many words when reading the newspaper! Can you give an example of a character in the 5 vernacular novels not in the unicode font? By the way, Unicode *does* include the simplified characters.

[Dennis]

现代汉语词典 is indeed short of many words when reading newspapers but I don't read newspapers.

Yes, unicode does include simplified characters but that is not what I meant with my previous comment.

語changes to 语 and 說 changes to 说 but an ancient word for to study shi4 written with 言radical and 是 phonetic element I cannot write it with unicode and only as fantizi with encoding GB2312 and not as jiantizi with the simplified radical 言。

Although this simplified character shi4 appears in my book

[fenlan]

Dennis, you gave a good example, but see http://www.unicode.org/cgi-bin/GetUnihanData.pl?codepoint=8ADF&useutf8=false. It looks like the character you mentioned is in the Unicode character set, but fonts like MS Arial Unicode have not got around to covering it.

[Dennis]

That is indeed an annoying problem!!!!!!!!

I have a lot of bilingual books Guanhua/Putonghua Putonghua/Minnanhua which would solve the many questions most people have in this forum but I cannot type those characters

[Jose]

Fenlan, I frankly don't want this discussion to drag on, but I feel that I have to reply to a few things you've said. First, I don't have any experience in literary translation. The little translation work I've done in the past involved rather boring stuff. However, I think if we're to compare the relative merits of two languages, being proficient in both is a good starting point. I am probably in a better position than you to judge how difficult it is to learn English since I've learned it as a second language. For a native speaker of Spanish, I would say English is a fairly easy language, since it has a lot of recognisable vocabulary and very little inflection. Of course, as with all languages, achieving a high level of proficiency is very difficult. I don't know why you think Spanish is so easy. I have yet to meet a British person who can speak good Spanish. In terms of difficulty, I would say all the romance languages are pretty much the same since they share a similar structure. French should be a little easier than Spanish for English speakers because there is more familiar vocabulary. There are also fewer verb endings to learn. On the other hand, spelling and pronunciation are probably easier in Spanish.

I do think that all languages are potentially equally expressive. Don't forget that both English and Spanish were pidgin languages in their origins. While I agree that it is easier to use as a literary medium a language that already has a corpus of literature, any language can develop a written standard. The extension of the vocabulary at its disposal will grow as it is needed. Anyway, if you compare English with any other major European language, there is no fundamental difference as far as the existence of a literary tradition, with roots in the classical antiquity, is concerned.

As for shifting the discussion towards grammar, you expressed two opinions that I disagree with. First, that English has indisputably a larger vocabulary than other languages. I think this is a myth based on the availability of much bigger dictionaries than do exist for other languages. Secondly, you also stated that, as a logical consequence, it is more expressive. You have presented that logical inferrence as if it were an obvious one, and it is not necessarily so, and that's why I brought grammatical considerations into the discussion. The fact that I disagree with the second point doesn't mean that I've conceded defeat on the first one. Regarding this second point, by the way, a fine example of a language where grammar can account for much expressive force is Arabic. Arabs have always tried to shun foreign vocabulary, valuing the purity of their language. However, the algebraic nature of the verbal system, where you can potentially form more than ten derived verbs (and its respective nominal derivations) from any triliteral root means that it can very easily coin new terms by just filling unused slots. Try telling an Arab that English is superior to Arabic. I'm sure they won't like it.

As for your challenge with the "sky" words, I have already said that I haven't any Spanish reference books at hand. I've just moved to England and I hardly have any books here. I repeat once more that I wish there were as good dictionaries of Spanish as there are of English. Most of the English synonyms for "sky" and "heaven" that you mentioned are not words an ordinary speaker would know. You can't expect me to know all synonyms by heart without consulting a thesaurus, and, believe me, there is no comprehensive thesaurus of Spanish available online. The DRAE is freely available, but it is a dictionary arranged alphabetically that doesn't include lists of synonyms.

Lastly, I gathered that you couldn't speak Spanish from your use of "communicacion" in your first reply to me. Then you expressed lack of interest in any dictionary of languages other than English or Chinese. That's why I said that you didn't know the language nor were interested in it, and your latest post makes that even clearer. How can you expect me not to get upset if you say that English is more expressive than Spanish when you don't have the first-hand experience of using it as a primary literary medium? At least, I can read, and have read, English literature in the original, so I am familiar with both cultural traditions, which puts me in a better position to draw comparisons. It may well be because of my cultural background, but I can think of more favourite books in Spanish than in English. I certainly don't think one language is richer, or more expressive, than the other.

[fenlan]

Jose, let me assure you that Spanish is the very easiest language for English speakers to learn. Yes it is probably because of the pronunciation and spelling. The verbs seem to be more regular too. Even the irregular verbs follow discernible patterns. I don't think French should be an example of a language as easy as Spanish. If you had thought about it more deeply, you could have come up with Swedish or one of those languages, which, like Spanish, are Grade I languages according to the US Defense Language Institute at Monterrey.

Maybe you underrate your abilities in English. Your written English is clearly perfect and of a native speaker-equivalent level. It is difficult to get to that level. I know, because few Spanish people speak truly good English. Spain is not in the same category as the Netherlands, Scandinavia and Germany for spoken English. But, you are right, there have been articles in the English newspapers about how Spain has overtaken France in the quality of the English spoken there. But then, if you live in Benidorm, you have plenty of opportunity to practice So you have done well to master English so well. Don't put yourself down!

As for Spanish literature, don't forget it was 18 years ago, but for my A level I read in full the following 3 books: Hoy es Fiesta by Antonio Buero Vallejo. This was my favourite. El otro arbol de Guernica (excuse lack of accents) by Luis de Castresana, and El Coronel no tiene quien le escriba by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Excuse lack of accents all round - I can't be bothered. But it was 18 years ago, and my memory is now poor for Spanish.

I studied 5 years of Spanish, 5 years of Latin, 8 years of French, a year of Italian at school, 4 years of Chinese, 4 years of Russian, a year of Ukrainian, and one year of Old Norse/modern Icelandic. The reason why I commented on your saying you objected to someone who knew no Spanish discussing the size of the Spanish vocabulary, was that, whether true or not, it was clearly a cheap point!

[fenlan]

Dennis, the character you wanted is in the SimSun Founder Extended font, which can be dowloaded from http://www.e139.com/festival/font/SURSONG.TTF The file is 40MB and the download is very, very slow - you will need a download manager that suppports resuming.

Because I have installed the font, I can see the character here: 諟, but it won't show on your computer using smaller Unicode fonts. 諟 is in the Unicode standard, but not all fonts that claim to be Unicode provide glyphs for every single character.

[HoVis]

Um.... okay, this may be potentially a little foolish, but I am going to stick my head into what seems to be a potentially heated discussion

I have learnt from doing public speaking debates that the most important thing to do when debating a point is to *define* what it is that is being debated. At the moment you two are discussing the expressiveness of a language... but what exactly do either of you mean by 'expressiveness'?

I personally consider written Chinese to be "expressive" simply because the makeup of the characters infers more than just the meaning of the characters, if that makes sense. For example, the character "好" - good - is made up of the characters "女" and "子" - woman and child. This infers not only the word "good" but also shows in a way what was considered to be "good" at the time that the character was first developed. English - and I won't even claim to know anything about any other language! - just doesn't do this in the same way. I could tell the above things about the character "好" with only a rudimentary grasp of Chinese - to look deeper at the "meanings within the meanings" in English (for example Latin roots, etc), one needs experience and understanding of languages such as Latin and deeper linguistic knowledge. For example the word "malcontent" is a negative term containing the Latin term "Mal" for "bad" (this is, btw, the ONLY word I know of Latin!). However the words and meanings which make it up are not immediately apparent, especially not to non-native speakers or indeed youngsters like myself who have never been force-fed lessons in Latin!

Fenlan's point that it was incorrect to claim all languages are equally expressive just to avoid insulting the people who speak them is a little illogical IMHO (no offence). Over-political correctness IS annoying but the reason that we can't really say if one language is more expressive than another is simply that it is such a difficult thing to define - once again because people have different ideas of what *is* expressive! Vocabulary size does not necessarilly lead to expressiveness within a language, nor is the number of synonyms for one word an adequate sample of the entire language. And anyway, it isn't the synonyms that make the language expressive - it is the subtle differences between the synonyms. Sometimes, trying to explain the nuances of a particular word in English to a non-native speaker, it might seem that English is more expressive - but there are probably many examples of such nuances *the other way round*.

However... is it the actual language itself which makes it expressive or not, or the person using it and the person understanding it? We can all take as little or as much as we want from those little nuances in each and every word...

Please don't shout at me now, either of you!

[gougou]

this may be potentially a little foolish, but I am going to stick my head into what seems to be a potentially heated discussion

Given that they had almost two years to cool off, I don't think they'll be too angry anymore...

[HoVis]

Erm....... oops.