There are 12 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. TRANSLATION: Ignorance is seldom bliss, knowledge is always power
From: Daniel Bowman
2a. Re: "English has the most words of any language"
From: Patrick Dunn
2b. Re: "English has the most words of any language"
From: George Corley
2c. Re: "English has the most words of any language"
From: Patrick Dunn
2d. Re: "English has the most words of any language"
From: Douglas Koller
2e. Re: "English has the most words of any language"
From: George Corley
2f. Re: "English has the most words of any language"
From: MorphemeAddict
2g. Re: "English has the most words of any language"
From: Douglas Koller
2h. Re: "English has the most words of any language"
From: Allison Swenson
2i. Re: "English has the most words of any language"
From: Elena ``of Valhalla''
2j. Re: "English has the most words of any language"
From: MorphemeAddict
3a. Re: weird msg.
From: Jean-François Colson
Messages
________________________________________________________________________
1. TRANSLATION: Ignorance is seldom bliss, knowledge is always power
Posted by: "Daniel Bowman" [email protected]
Date: Mon Mar 18, 2013 7:57 pm ((PDT))
It's been a while since we've had a translation challenge on the list, and I
think this one is pretty fun.
"Ignorance is seldom bliss. Knowledge is always power."
A friend of mine posted this on his Facebook profile. It is unattributed.
Google searches turn up only one hit, and it's definitely not him. My
conclusion is that he probably made it up himself, independently. It's one of
my favorite quotes, ever.
I started mulling this phrase over while walking the dogs today. I realized
that it was a perfect opportunity to take my evidentials for a spin. So here
we go, in Angosey:
Ignorance is seldom bliss.
Aneysaharaya sanarith al hresaneth.
EVID-dubious-CONJ-sit-is-ASP-emotive ignorance CONJ-em peacefulness.
Knowledge is always power.
Eysajrenhhaya'sin ralath ay khala.
EVID-inf-CONJ-sit-equals-ASP-emotive-CYCLIC understanding CONJ-sit power.
Abbrevs:
EVID = evidential
CONJ = conjugation
sit = situational
ASP = aspect
em = animate
inf = inference
CYCLIC = cyclic tense
The "dubious" evidential denotes that the speaker thinks the statement is
likely false.
The "inference" evidential denotes that the speaker is asserting something from
evidence s/he has witnessed directly (i.e. "A raccoon walked here" would be
marked with the "inference" evidential if the speaker saw raccoon tracks).
The "situational" noun class denotes a noun for a situation or state of being.
In this case, "the state of ignorance."
The "animate" noun class denotes living animals, humans, or emotions.
The emotive aspect marks that the speaker feels strongly about this phrase.
If I translated back from Angosey as literally as I can, the phrase would now
read:
"It is said that ignorance is bliss, but I do not think this is true."
"I have seen repeated evidence that knowledge is power."
Messages in this topic (1)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
2a. Re: "English has the most words of any language"
Posted by: "Patrick Dunn" [email protected]
Date: Mon Mar 18, 2013 8:48 pm ((PDT))
One way to measure that would be to determine the 80% and 90% vocabulary of
English and compare it to the size of such vocabularies in other languages.
That'd give you a rough sense of the size of the lexicon, it seems to me.
I got the idea from this article, which puts the 80% vocabulary of English
at 2400 lemmas (I have no idea where that figure comes from). If so, that
puts English more or less on par with most modern languages.
Another way to measure it would be to say "what's the average vocabulary of
the average native speaker?" There are quite a few ways to measure that,
and my hypothesis is that a truly random sampling of native speakers will
probably turn up roughly the same number of lemmas no matter what the
language is.
On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 9:54 PM, George Corley <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 9:37 PM, Daniel Bowman <[email protected]
> >wrote:
>
> > His argued that English has incorporated a great deal of words from other
> > languages (i.e. Latin, Greek), and that English has tended to incorporate
> > more than other languages.
>
>
> English is particularly loan-happy, but not really to any extreme degree.
> I don't think there are any languages that don't have _some_ loanwords, and
> very many languages are just as loan-happy as English, if not moreso.
>
>
> > I think his argument could be moderated to
> > "English has a lot of words compared to most other languages" given the
> > diversity of peoples that speak it, but even that runs into the question
> of
> > measurement.
>
>
> Yes, and measurement is key.
>
>
> > I think it is likely that any literate language (i.e.
> > language with a large written corpus) will probably have more "words"
> than
> > a purely spoken language. Perhaps naively, I'd argue that because you
> can
> > write down words such as "incarnadine" and "syzygy", you are spared the
> > mental effort of remembering them, and can thus develop and use highly
> > specific terms that would be a real pain in a purely oral language.
> >
>
> Possible, but there is another issue in that some languages have very long
> written histories. To what extent will you include obsolete words that are
> scattered through the history of English, or earlier variant meanings of a
> lexeme that are no longer used? If you're not careful, you could grossly
> inflate the number of words in English or Chinese or any other language
> with a long written history relative to, say, Navajo.
>
> To some extent, including specialized technical terms also points out, for
> me at least, that figuring out what language has the "most" words is kind
> of pointless. It doesn't really give any great insight into language to
> determine that a language has more lexemes if a huge number of those
> lexemes will never be used by the average speaker.
>
--
Second Person, a chapbook of poetry by Patrick Dunn, is now available for
order from Finishing Line
Press<http://www.finishinglinepress.com/NewReleasesandForthcomingTitles.htm>
and
Amazon<http://www.amazon.com/Second-Person-Patrick-Dunn/dp/1599249065/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1324342341&sr=8-2>.
Messages in this topic (14)
________________________________________________________________________
2b. Re: "English has the most words of any language"
Posted by: "George Corley" [email protected]
Date: Mon Mar 18, 2013 8:56 pm ((PDT))
On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 10:48 PM, Patrick Dunn <[email protected]> wrote:
> One way to measure that would be to determine the 80% and 90% vocabulary of
> English and compare it to the size of such vocabularies in other languages.
> That'd give you a rough sense of the size of the lexicon, it seems to me.
> I got the idea from this article, which puts the 80% vocabulary of English
> at 2400 lemmas (I have no idea where that figure comes from). If so, that
> puts English more or less on par with most modern languages.
>
I'm not familiar with those terms. By "90% vocabulary" do you mean the
words that 90% of the population knows?
> Another way to measure it would be to say "what's the average vocabulary of
> the average native speaker?" There are quite a few ways to measure that,
> and my hypothesis is that a truly random sampling of native speakers will
> probably turn up roughly the same number of lemmas no matter what the
> language is.
>
I would argue that this wouldn't be so much a measurement of the language's
lexical inventory as a measurement of the average education level of the
native speaker community. You could easily have one language with more
lexemes, but a smaller number of educated people, and another language that
has fewer lexemes (in absolute numbers) but a larger base of educated
speakers with larger vocabularies.
Messages in this topic (14)
________________________________________________________________________
2c. Re: "English has the most words of any language"
Posted by: "Patrick Dunn" [email protected]
Date: Mon Mar 18, 2013 8:59 pm ((PDT))
On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 10:56 PM, George Corley <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 10:48 PM, Patrick Dunn <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > One way to measure that would be to determine the 80% and 90% vocabulary
> of
> > English and compare it to the size of such vocabularies in other
> languages.
> > That'd give you a rough sense of the size of the lexicon, it seems to
> me.
> > I got the idea from this article, which puts the 80% vocabulary of
> English
> > at 2400 lemmas (I have no idea where that figure comes from). If so,
> that
> > puts English more or less on par with most modern languages.
> >
>
> I'm not familiar with those terms. By "90% vocabulary" do you mean the
> words that 90% of the population knows?
>
Oh, sorry. No, I mean the vocabulary that makes up 80% of the discourse.
>
>
> > Another way to measure it would be to say "what's the average vocabulary
> of
> > the average native speaker?" There are quite a few ways to measure that,
> > and my hypothesis is that a truly random sampling of native speakers will
> > probably turn up roughly the same number of lemmas no matter what the
> > language is.
> >
>
> I would argue that this wouldn't be so much a measurement of the language's
> lexical inventory as a measurement of the average education level of the
> native speaker community. You could easily have one language with more
> lexemes, but a smaller number of educated people, and another language that
> has fewer lexemes (in absolute numbers) but a larger base of educated
> speakers with larger vocabularies.
>
Well, I see your point, but language exists chiefly in the minds of the
people speaking it. If no one -- or just a few people -- knows the word
"dord," does it exist?
--
Second Person, a chapbook of poetry by Patrick Dunn, is now available for
order from Finishing Line
Press<http://www.finishinglinepress.com/NewReleasesandForthcomingTitles.htm>
and
Amazon<http://www.amazon.com/Second-Person-Patrick-Dunn/dp/1599249065/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1324342341&sr=8-2>.
Messages in this topic (14)
________________________________________________________________________
2d. Re: "English has the most words of any language"
Posted by: "Douglas Koller" [email protected]
Date: Mon Mar 18, 2013 9:42 pm ((PDT))
> Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2013 22:21:07 -0400
> From: [email protected]
> Subject: "English has the most words of any language"
> To: [email protected]
> I was talking to someone today, and he stated that English has the most words
> of any language. I'm pretty suspicious when I hear such claims, and he did
> not have direct evidence to back up his assertion. However, he is one of the
> smartest and most knowledgeable people I know, and his father happened to be
> chair of the department of linguistics at one point. It's hard to chalk his
> claim up to ignorance or misinformation, so I started wondering: is this in
> fact true?
> I was wondering what list members think. Is this something that's been
> claimed before, and if so, how is it regarded in the linguistic community?
> Does anyone have a (reputable or suspicious) source that says English has the
> most words? If this is a legitimate claim, how is it determined?
I've heard this one before, certainly. But it makes no bones about it -- you're
supposed to include *every*thing. *All* the hyper-specific jargons, *all* the
legalese and its Latinisms, *all* the taxonomies, *all* the words like "yclept"
(though I'm guessing Shakespeare or thereabouts may be the cut-off point),
*all* the coinages from even the remotest, farthest-flung corners of Empire,
*all* the slang, *all* the slithy toves... Put it *al*together and you have,
well, one rather impressively large corpus -- or at least, a hefty,
multi-volume edition of the OED (and the number "1,000,000" is bandied about).
Is that useful in any practical or linguistic sense? I think not. But it does
make English speakers feel warm and fuzzy about themselves somehow, and will
keep a respectable cocktail party conversation going for at least fifteen
minutes. Like fireworks, you're supposed to ooo and aah at it while you're
there, but not really discuss it in gross detail the following morning.
Barring that, let me arbitrate: English has 1,087,562 words, full stop. ;)
Kou
Messages in this topic (14)
________________________________________________________________________
2e. Re: "English has the most words of any language"
Posted by: "George Corley" [email protected]
Date: Mon Mar 18, 2013 9:49 pm ((PDT))
On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 11:42 PM, Douglas Koller
<[email protected]>wrote:
>
> I've heard this one before, certainly. But it makes no bones about it --
> you're supposed to include *every*thing. *All* the hyper-specific jargons,
> *all* the legalese and its Latinisms, *all* the taxonomies, *all* the words
> like "yclept" (though I'm guessing Shakespeare or thereabouts may be the
> cut-off point), *all* the coinages from even the remotest, farthest-flung
> corners of Empire, *all* the slang, *all* the slithy toves... Put it
> *al*together and you have, well, one rather impressively large corpus -- or
> at least, a hefty, multi-volume edition of the OED (and the number
> "1,000,000" is bandied about). Is that useful in any practical or
> linguistic sense? I think not. But it does make English speakers feel warm
> and fuzzy about themselves somehow, and will keep a respectable cocktail
> party conversation going for at least fifteen minutes. Like fireworks,
> you're supposed to ooo and aah at it while you're there, but not really
> discuss it in gross detail the following morning.
>
> Barring that, let me arbitrate: English has 1,087,562 words, full stop. ;)
According to the OED? A source should be cited for such a specific number,
rather like the number of languages in the world (there are 7,105 according
to Ethnologue, but that number is far too specific to reflect our actual
certainty -- much better to say "about 7000").
Messages in this topic (14)
________________________________________________________________________
2f. Re: "English has the most words of any language"
Posted by: "MorphemeAddict" [email protected]
Date: Mon Mar 18, 2013 10:07 pm ((PDT))
On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 12:42 AM, Douglas Koller
<[email protected]>wrote:
> > Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2013 22:21:07 -0400
> > From: [email protected]
> > Subject: "English has the most words of any language"
> > To: [email protected]
>
> > I was talking to someone today, and he stated that English has the most
> words of any language. I'm pretty suspicious when I hear such claims, and
> he did not have direct evidence to back up his assertion. However, he is
> one of the smartest and most knowledgeable people I know, and his father
> happened to be chair of the department of linguistics at one point. It's
> hard to chalk his claim up to ignorance or misinformation, so I started
> wondering: is this in fact true?
>
> > I was wondering what list members think. Is this something that's been
> claimed before, and if so, how is it regarded in the linguistic community?
> Does anyone have a (reputable or suspicious) source that says English has
> the most words? If this is a legitimate claim, how is it determined?
>
> I've heard this one before, certainly. But it makes no bones about it --
> you're supposed to include *every*thing. *All* the hyper-specific jargons,
> *all* the legalese and its Latinisms, *all* the taxonomies, *all* the words
> like "yclept" (though I'm guessing Shakespeare or thereabouts may be the
> cut-off point), *all* the coinages from even the remotest, farthest-flung
> corners of Empire, *all* the slang, *all* the slithy toves... Put it
> *al*together and you have, well, one rather impressively large corpus -- or
> at least, a hefty, multi-volume edition of the OED (and the number
> "1,000,000" is bandied about). Is that useful in any practical or
> linguistic sense? I think not. But it does make English speakers feel warm
> and fuzzy about themselves somehow, and will keep a respectable cocktail
> party conversation going for at least fifteen minutes. Like fireworks,
> you're supposed to ooo and aah at it while you're there, but not really
> discuss it in gross detail the following morning.
>
> Barring that, let me arbitrate: English has 1,087,562 words, full stop. ;)
>
> I thought it was 1,048,576. My bad.
stevo
> Kou
>
Messages in this topic (14)
________________________________________________________________________
2g. Re: "English has the most words of any language"
Posted by: "Douglas Koller" [email protected]
Date: Tue Mar 19, 2013 4:55 am ((PDT))
> Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2013 01:06:45 -0400
> From: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: "English has the most words of any language"
> To: [email protected]
> On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 12:42 AM, Douglas Koller
> <[email protected]>wrote:
> > Barring that, let me arbitrate: English has 1,087,562 words, full stop. ;)
> > I thought it was 1,048,576. My bad.
Hey, you didn't know.
Kou
Messages in this topic (14)
________________________________________________________________________
2h. Re: "English has the most words of any language"
Posted by: "Allison Swenson" [email protected]
Date: Tue Mar 19, 2013 5:33 am ((PDT))
I hereby declare the world "grumphle" to be a verb describing how one feels
immediately after dragging oneself out of the bed in the morning to the
tune of the world's most annoying alarm clock to go to work the morning
after spending all night watching a Lost marathon (as in, I grumphled my
way out of bed at the unearthly hour of 6 AM). Haha! Now there's 1,087,563
words!
On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 12:42 AM, Douglas Koller
<[email protected]>wrote:
> > Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2013 22:21:07 -0400
> > From: [email protected]
> > Subject: "English has the most words of any language"
> > To: [email protected]
>
> > I was talking to someone today, and he stated that English has the most
> words of any language. I'm pretty suspicious when I hear such claims, and
> he did not have direct evidence to back up his assertion. However, he is
> one of the smartest and most knowledgeable people I know, and his father
> happened to be chair of the department of linguistics at one point. It's
> hard to chalk his claim up to ignorance or misinformation, so I started
> wondering: is this in fact true?
>
> > I was wondering what list members think. Is this something that's been
> claimed before, and if so, how is it regarded in the linguistic community?
> Does anyone have a (reputable or suspicious) source that says English has
> the most words? If this is a legitimate claim, how is it determined?
>
> I've heard this one before, certainly. But it makes no bones about it --
> you're supposed to include *every*thing. *All* the hyper-specific jargons,
> *all* the legalese and its Latinisms, *all* the taxonomies, *all* the words
> like "yclept" (though I'm guessing Shakespeare or thereabouts may be the
> cut-off point), *all* the coinages from even the remotest, farthest-flung
> corners of Empire, *all* the slang, *all* the slithy toves... Put it
> *al*together and you have, well, one rather impressively large corpus -- or
> at least, a hefty, multi-volume edition of the OED (and the number
> "1,000,000" is bandied about). Is that useful in any practical or
> linguistic sense? I think not. But it does make English speakers feel warm
> and fuzzy about themselves somehow, and will keep a respectable cocktail
> party conversation going for at least fifteen minutes. Like fireworks,
> you're supposed to ooo and aah at it while you're there, but not really
> discuss it in gross detail the following morning.
>
> Barring that, let me arbitrate: English has 1,087,562 words, full stop. ;)
>
> Kou
>
Messages in this topic (14)
________________________________________________________________________
2i. Re: "English has the most words of any language"
Posted by: "Elena ``of Valhalla''" [email protected]
Date: Tue Mar 19, 2013 5:51 am ((PDT))
On 2013-03-18 at 22:21:07 -0400, Daniel Bowman wrote:
> I was talking to someone today, and he stated that English has the
> most words of any language.
I believe I've read somewhere that this claim came from the fact
that the OED is bigger (in number of entries / cm^3) than other comparable
dictionaries for other languages.
This would be easily verificable [1]_ , and also completely useless
for anything beyond the 15 minutes cocktail party conversation
that has been mentioned in the thread.
.. [1] is there anybody in the list with easy access to a few such
dictionaries, a ruler and 10 minutes to waste? :D
--
Elena ``of Valhalla''
Messages in this topic (14)
________________________________________________________________________
2j. Re: "English has the most words of any language"
Posted by: "MorphemeAddict" [email protected]
Date: Tue Mar 19, 2013 6:11 am ((PDT))
On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 8:51 AM, Elena ``of Valhalla'' <
[email protected]> wrote:
> On 2013-03-18 at 22:21:07 -0400, Daniel Bowman wrote:
> > I was talking to someone today, and he stated that English has the
> > most words of any language.
>
> I believe I've read somewhere that this claim came from the fact
> that the OED is bigger (in number of entries / cm^3) than other comparable
> dictionaries for other languages.
>
This could be because the OED is so big, either the small version, which is
4 times more information-dense than its large version, which is 20-ish
volumes long.
stevo
>
> This would be easily verificable [1]_ , and also completely useless
> for anything beyond the 15 minutes cocktail party conversation
> that has been mentioned in the thread.
>
> .. [1] is there anybody in the list with easy access to a few such
> dictionaries, a ruler and 10 minutes to waste? :D
>
> --
> Elena ``of Valhalla''
>
Messages in this topic (14)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
3a. Re: weird msg.
Posted by: "Jean-François Colson" [email protected]
Date: Tue Mar 19, 2013 4:42 am ((PDT))
Le 19/03/13 03:42, Robert Marshall Murphy a écrit :
> Definitely spam. I didn't click on it, but an open wp-content folder on a
> Word Press blog is a common hack (that I fell victim to once). Don't click
> it.
>
> -Robert Murphy-
>
> On Mar 18, 2013, at 9:40 PM, Roger Mills <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> I (and 5 others) have received the following-- from one Campbell Nilsen a
>> name I don't recognize (nor do I recognize the names of the other 5
>> recipients).
>> I almost hesitate even to pass this along lest it's something bad for
>> one's computer--
>>
>> This was the subject line:
>> http://elearnva.com/themes/bluemarine/ndvmh.htmland it goes to this:
>> http://www.starhunter.net/blog/wp-content/themes/classic/gqfji.html
>> I haven't opened that. Anyone know more?
It is spam. I did click on it (with a GNU/Linux OS, Im less concerned
by viruses) and I was redirected to
http://fastfatburningwaysmethodology.com/diet/GreenCoffeDiet/index.html
: FACTUAL STUDY: CHLOROGENIC ACID IN GREEN COFFEE BURNS FAT. 15 LB.
LOSS MONTHLY! (Should I write ROTFL?) Thats a good way to sell coffee
but Im a little doubtful about such a weight loss.
JF
Messages in this topic (3)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/conlang/
<*> Your email settings:
Digest Email | Traditional
<*> To change settings online go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/conlang/join
(Yahoo! ID required)
<*> To change settings via email:
[email protected]
[email protected]
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
[email protected]
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
------------------------------------------------------------------------
