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Linguists and esperanto

من Altebrilas, 24 مايو، 2011

المشاركات: 216

لغة: English

sudanglo (عرض الملف الشخصي) 21 يونيو، 2011 12:14:31 م

There isn't a linear link between the number of roots and the difficulty of finding a word to express your meaning on the fly - which is what really counts.

Too few roots and there's too much head-scratching to find an appropriate combination. With an excess of roots, some are used a lot and others rarely.

Esperanto's solution of allowing wordbuilding AND incorporation of international roots can probably not be bettered from a practical point of view.

The sort of society you live in makes a difference to the number of roots/words you need.

Modern industrialized societies are very complex and getting ever increasingly so.

I believe I read somewhere that a large proportion of the words in English which are in current use were added between 1900 and 2000.

So if English has had to adapt itself in that way to social and technological change, it shouldn't be surprising that the root-stock of Esperanto has grown over the same period.

I probably misremember this, but I think I heard that the word stock of English in 1900 was only 500,000 - now 1 million.

ceigered (عرض الملف الشخصي) 21 يونيو، 2011 12:42:32 م

sudanglo:I probably misremember this, but I think I heard that the word stock of English in 1900 was only 500,000 - now 1 million.
Sounds about right, but without allowing for the idea that some words are now so archaic and rare that no one would use them - perhaps 25% of what we consider words today wouldn't have been considered *English* words back then but still used, and perhaps some things we consider Modern English words should be "culled off".

That said, diversity never hurt anyone, unless it was a diversity of medical complications.

robbkvasnak (عرض الملف الشخصي) 21 يونيو، 2011 6:03:33 م

Many native English and American speakers think that the size of vocabulary makes English very rich. I think however that people with less education have a hard time expressing themselves and a very hard time reading. This also means that English is in a certain way less democratic than some other languages like Icelandic and Esperanto. Even Chinese uses fewer roots to express the same thing as English does.

geo63 (عرض الملف الشخصي) 21 يونيو، 2011 6:36:57 م

robbkvasnak:Many native English and American speakers think that the size of vocabulary makes English very rich. I think however that people with less education have a hard time expressing themselves and a very hard time reading. This also means that English is in a certain way less democratic than some other languages like Icelandic and Esperanto. Even Chinese uses fewer roots to express the same thing as English does.
English can (may/might?) have 1.000.000 words but an average person does not use more than 15...30 thousands words. So 970.000 are useless for most users. Big vocabulary is a burden for those who must learn the lnguage. Look at esperanto. With 1000 roots our Polish esperantist Kabe translated "Faraono" (epic 3 tome roman) from Polish language. If this was done in English using 1000 words, the result would be unreadable. So I think, the real power of the language lies not in huge vocabulary, but in the ability of expression. If I learn a new esperanto word, I can create many new words from it (esperanto grammar gives me such opportunity). Esperanto vocabulary is multiplicative. If I learn a new word in English, I have just this one word. The vocabulary of English is additive. So which language, esperanto or English, is more powerful in terms of expression?

sudanglo (عرض الملف الشخصي) 21 يونيو، 2011 11:09:15 م

Geo, I think you overlook an important point in your statistics.

Granted, that a survey of the number of different words that occur in samples of a speakers speech or writing may be relatively limited in comparison to the number of words listed in the dictionary.

But there will be many words that the sampled speakers can recognize in context which don't pop up in a sample.

Additionally native speakers will have an extensive vocabulary that is latent - available to be used when necessary, but infrequently employed.

It may be 10 years since I last used the word 'crankshaft', or 'pewter', but those words will immmediately come to mind when I have a need for them.

henma (عرض الملف الشخصي) 22 يونيو، 2011 12:20:15 ص

sudanglo:Geo, I think you overlook an important point in your statistics.

Granted, that a survey of the number of different words that occur in samples of a speakers speech or writing may be relatively limited in comparison to the number of words listed in the dictionary.

But there will be many words that the sampled speakers can recognize in context which don't pop up in a sample.

Additionally native speakers will have an extensive vocabulary that is latent - available to be used when necessary, but infrequently employed.

It may be 10 years since I last used the word 'crankshaft', or 'pewter', but those words will immmediately come to mind when I have a need for them.
+1

I totally agree. Sudanglo pravas!

Additionally, we should consider two facts:

- Even when average speakers use some 30.000 words, not all of them use the same 30.000 words (given different specialization of each of them... a doctor and a mechanical engineer have a set of words which don't intersect completely).

- To get fluent in the language you don't need to learn the whole available vocabulary. You need only some 30.000 words to be at an average level rideto.gif

Amike,

Daniel.

henma (عرض الملف الشخصي) 22 يونيو، 2011 12:22:51 ص

sudanglo:I believe I read somewhere that a large proportion of the words in English which are in current use were added between 1900 and 2000.

So if English has had to adapt itself in that way to social and technological change, it shouldn't be surprising that the root-stock of Esperanto has grown over the same period.
Mmmhh... that, and the fact that before that the language had just been invented... okulumo.gif

Amike,

Daniel.

ceigered (عرض الملف الشخصي) 22 يونيو، 2011 11:12:15 ص

robbkvasnak:Many native English and American speakers think that the size of vocabulary makes English very rich. I think however that people with less education have a hard time expressing themselves and a very hard time reading. This also means that English is in a certain way less democratic than some other languages like Icelandic and Esperanto. Even Chinese uses fewer roots to express the same thing as English does.
I don't think they're more democratic. If anything all languages are capitalist, aristocratic anarchies rido.gif.
Laŭ mi, English just happens to reflect a capitalist, aristocratic anarchy similar to Imperial Russia - lots of territory, not much of it "matters" (to St. Petersburg at least).

sudanglo (عرض الملف الشخصي) 23 يونيو، 2011 12:45:09 م

Perhaps all languages are democratic in the sense that they tend to evolve vocabularies that reflect the expressive needs of the speakers. The more speakers and the more divergent their interests, the greater the vocabulary growth.

But languages have different techniques for creating new words. English has never hestitated in usurping words from other languages as well as creating home-grown constructs. This has led to many near duplicates.

hermeso (عرض الملف الشخصي) 23 يونيو، 2011 8:42:10 م

The matter is not the 10 000 words or 1000 words. The matter is the uze of the words. it is very, (1)in english, we have got to learn words think and thought, in esperanto, pensi and pensa, in english, this are plurals complicated, in esperanto, plural by "j" in every word. (2) But for tomat, salad, tin, ..., it is in esperanto, tomato, salado, stano. Like this in inglish and in esperanto, we learn the same many word.

In the case (1) 10 000 english words is 1000 esperanto words. In the case 2, 1 000 000 english words is 1 000 000 esperanto words. The addition 1+2 is 1 010 000 english words, and 1 001 000 esperanto words. The addition is almost same

Of course, we dont learn 1 000 000 words in the life, but the matter is same

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