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What is the richest language in the world?
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Based on a fusion of Germanic and Latin languages English, with half a million words, would take a lot of beating. This is true, but it is not the mere number of its words that makes English the most likely candidate. Unlike any other language (that I know of!), English has two word hordes and two grammatical structures. Normally a language has one native word horde (that may include many terms borrowed from other languages); and one native grammatical structure informing its various kinds of utterances. English officially begins with two distinct dialects, one called Anglic and the other called Saxon. Modern Anglic is spoken in Lowland Scotland and is called Scots or Lallands or Doric, and is erroneously despised by some ignorant people as a debasement of modern Saxon, which we call Standard English. There was also a long period of Danish occupation bringing many Danish words to co-exist with Old English cognates (skirt beside shirt, skiff beside skiff for example) as well as the important pronoun they (the Old English word for they is she). With the Conquest in 1066, Norman (Viking) French took over, and by the time English regained its self respect, it had acquired a great deal of French vocabulary and also of French grammar, so that we may say both God\'s house using Germanic grammar and The house of God using French grammar, or in the same way we can say handsomer or more handsome. So English has two very distinct and mutually semi-comprehensible Germanic dialects, the Angelic and the Saxon. Scots (Anglic) words like wee or \'sma\' are often quaint, but they are not foreign. And there is the French stuff, which also introduced all the Latin and Greek stuff like Constitution and Etymology. And then there are the American Standard, and the Anglo-Indian and Australian dialects, all contributing unique words and phrases, idioms and expressions. We\'re rich, all right!
2nd answer.
the Greek language is the richest in the world with 5 million words and 70 million word types, according to the 1990 Guinness Book of Records, while the English language has only 490.000 words. It also underlined the meaning of the alphabet in a language as the letters symbolize specific qualities.
Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_richest_language_in_the_world#ixzz1ENDf9hZm
In: Literature & Language [Edit categories]
[Improve]
Based on a fusion of Germanic and Latin languages English, with half a million words, would take a lot of beating. This is true, but it is not the mere number of its words that makes English the most likely candidate. Unlike any other language (that I know of!), English has two word hordes and two grammatical structures. Normally a language has one native word horde (that may include many terms borrowed from other languages); and one native grammatical structure informing its various kinds of utterances. English officially begins with two distinct dialects, one called Anglic and the other called Saxon. Modern Anglic is spoken in Lowland Scotland and is called Scots or Lallands or Doric, and is erroneously despised by some ignorant people as a debasement of modern Saxon, which we call Standard English. There was also a long period of Danish occupation bringing many Danish words to co-exist with Old English cognates (skirt beside shirt, skiff beside skiff for example) as well as the important pronoun they (the Old English word for they is she). With the Conquest in 1066, Norman (Viking) French took over, and by the time English regained its self respect, it had acquired a great deal of French vocabulary and also of French grammar, so that we may say both God\'s house using Germanic grammar and The house of God using French grammar, or in the same way we can say handsomer or more handsome. So English has two very distinct and mutually semi-comprehensible Germanic dialects, the Angelic and the Saxon. Scots (Anglic) words like wee or \'sma\' are often quaint, but they are not foreign. And there is the French stuff, which also introduced all the Latin and Greek stuff like Constitution and Etymology. And then there are the American Standard, and the Anglo-Indian and Australian dialects, all contributing unique words and phrases, idioms and expressions. We\'re rich, all right!
2nd answer.
the Greek language is the richest in the world with 5 million words and 70 million word types, according to the 1990 Guinness Book of Records, while the English language has only 490.000 words. It also underlined the meaning of the alphabet in a language as the letters symbolize specific qualities.
Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_richest_language_in_the_world#ixzz1ENDf9hZm
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