The inferiority of Romance vocabulary

LAA   Sun Jul 23, 2006 3:21 am GMT
I notice that English seems to have a much richer vocabulary, numerically speaking, than Romance languages. Well, at least Spanish. I wouldn't know personally, but I would assume the other Romance languages are in the same boat. Does anybody know how many words each language has?
Sigma   Sun Jul 23, 2006 3:43 am GMT
Inglés le debe una buena parte de su vocabulario al Francés y al Latín, no veo pues donde este la inferioridad gramaticalmente de las lenguas Romances.

Y con respecto al Español existe en esta lengua tal cantidad de sinonimos y una gran variedad de palabras para decir una misma cosa, que hay ciertas obras literarias escritas originalmente en Español, tales como; canciones, poemas, escritos en prosa y en verso, que no pueden ser expresadas con la misma intensidad en Inglés, debido a la falta de variedad de expresiones para expresar diversos grados de intensidad de un mismo sentimiento.

Un pequeño ejemplo:

En Inglés dicen solamente : Te odio (I hate you)

En Español hay mas formas de decirlo con un intensidad diferente:

Te odio ( I hate you +)
Te detesto (I hate you ++)
Te aborrezco ( I hate you +++)
Te alucino (I hate you +)
Te vomito ( I hate you ++++)
Te abomino ( I hate you ++++++)
Te desprecio ( I hate you +++)
Te repruebo ( I hate you +)
Te maldigo ( I hate you +++++++)

En Español es posible expresar un mismo sentimiento con grados distintos de emoción y de intensidad, lo cual cambia considerablemente el significado de lo que queremos decir, lo cual da la oportunidad a que se creen obras que expresen sentimiento de una forma muy compleja, lo cual no es posible en Inglés u otras lenguas.

No veo pues donde se encuentre la inferioridad en vocabulario de las lenguas Romances con respecto al Inglés, en todo caso yo diría que realmene es lo contrario.
LAA   Sun Jul 23, 2006 4:07 am GMT
Yes, I totally understand your point of view. Another example would be how in many Spanish songs when a man speaks of his lover, the phrase that is used would literally be translated in English, "The taste of you". That doesn't make sense in the English case, but it means an entirely different thing in Spanish. In English it would be taken to mean that he partakes of eating food.

In that sense, one can express himself better in Spanish. But in a lot of other cases, English has multiple words for the same meaning, while Spanish must make use of the same word, for multiple meanings. I think English has such a rich vocabulary because in addition to its Germanic base, it has absorbed numerous of Latinate words with which to use. In that sense, English has the best of both worlds. It has its own words of Germanic origin, PLUS the words of Latin origin, mainly imported from French. But please don't mistakenly believe that I'm claiming that English is somehow superior to Spanish. To the contrary, I love Spanish, even more so than English in many cases. But definitely not when it comes to rock music, lol.

You should listen to my favorite band's song, called "Carress me down". The band is famous in America, and they are from my home town. They are also Mexican-American, so much of their music is "Spanglish". You should listen to how the lead singer makes practical use of his lingual diversity, when he switches to Spanish to express himself in certain ways that he can't in English, but uses English when it is better suited for conveying a certain idea or meaning. It's a good example.
Benjamin   Sun Jul 23, 2006 4:13 am GMT
« En Inglés dicen solamente : Te odio (I hate you) »

Se puede también decir :

I abhor you
I despise you
I detest you
I dislike you
I loathe you
I am loath to you
LAA   Sun Jul 23, 2006 4:46 am GMT
"I am loath to you"

Although you're reply is entirely true, I would like to add that virtually no one would use the above expression in modern English. Well at least not in the U.S. Perhaps that is not the case in the U.K.
LAA   Sun Jul 23, 2006 4:48 am GMT
grammatical correction: "your" in place of "you're"
barcelonista   Sun Jul 23, 2006 5:37 am GMT
but if we take spanish from latin america than there a problem by the different vocabulary there is in latin america --example

kid in general is nino

in mex is mocoso

in cos is wila

in spain and nic is chaval
watson   Sun Jul 23, 2006 5:52 am GMT
ENGLISH SHOULD BE IN A SEPERATE CATEGORY CALLED GEROMAN LANGUAGES
LAA   Sun Jul 23, 2006 6:07 am GMT
"mocoso"

No, I would say "nino" or "chico" are more common.

"dont you think the spanish spoken in spain is getting exinct by mexican influence?"

Not at all. Where would you get that from? Mexican Spanish has absolutely no effect on Spanish spoken in Castille. To the contrary, the language was transferred to Mexico from Spain, not the other way around.

"english is basically latin
i dont know how english fits in that germanic category i dont see any correlations nor similarities"

I know English is more alienated from other Germanic languages because of French and thus Latin influence, but it certainly is not a "Latin" language.

Do me a favor and compare the numbers 1-20 in English and in German or Dutch.

Now compare those same numbers in English, with Italian or Spanish, or any other Latin language for that matter.

You will see the "correlations and the similiarities" which they supposedly lack.
Aldvs   Sun Jul 23, 2006 6:22 am GMT
In Mexico we use 'different' words to refer to an kid: Example;


Nino & Nina (general)
chiquillo & chiquilla (used in some parts of Mexico)
crio (Jalisco)
plebe (some parts of Mexico)
squinkle ( used in some parts of Mexico)
chamaco & chamaca (used in some parts of Mexico)
chaval & chavala (used in some parts of Mexico)
etc.

Mexican-spanish is enriched with variation.
fab   Sun Jul 23, 2006 5:09 pm GMT
I think it is difficult to count the precise number of words in a language, for further reasons :
- there is not only one unique form of a language. In quebec for exemple they use in their french a lot of english words we don't and inversely. Recently in France french have been integrated some neologisms of arabic origins such as "Kiff, Kiffer" to mean "to love". We use alos japanese words such as Suchi, judo, manga, etc. could we count these words in the french vocabulary ? every french knows what they mean.
the english language have integrated a lot of words from french, during a long time they were just "french words" - it is diffucult to decide from wich point a word can be considered to be part of the vocabulary.
the same way, are the words of native indian origins used in L-A spanish could be considered as spanish words ? difficult to say.
Sergio   Mon Jul 24, 2006 4:27 pm GMT
Hi LAA,

You shouldn't forget something:

Romance languages have inherited the vast majority of their vocabularies from Latin.

Old English already had its own Germanic vocabulary, PLUS a big influence from Latin, PLUS a big influence from French. A huge number of Romance words just added up to the already existent (and not necessarily small) Germanic vocabulary, whithout displacing much of it, but coexisting. That makes the resultant repertoir to be bigger than that of the Romance languages.
LAA   Mon Jul 24, 2006 4:32 pm GMT
Sergio,
I agree. In fact, this is what I said earlier during this topic:

"I think English has such a rich vocabulary because in addition to its Germanic base, it has absorbed numerous of Latinate words with which to use. In that sense, English has the best of both worlds. It has its own words of Germanic origin, PLUS the words of Latin origin, mainly imported from French."
Sergio   Mon Jul 24, 2006 5:20 pm GMT
LAA,

Sorry, I didn't read that.
LAA   Mon Jul 24, 2006 5:32 pm GMT
It's okay, it happens all the time.