this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2023
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Well, I can't think of an English example from the top of my head, but in German the words for Pear and (light) bulb are the same. So there are some exotic use cases.
We have plenty of homographs as well, “lead,” “bow,” etc but every once in a while I’m struck by just how massive the vocabulary of English is compared to… well, every other language.
That English has more words than other languages is a myth. Idk why but it keeps getting perpetuated so i guess people just believe it to be true.
Whats more is that its kinda difficult to even narrow down what a word is in a single language, and even more so to find a definition that fits all of them.
No it isn’t?
https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/language-most-words
Impressively the babbel article manages to include other commons myths like implying english is some kind of mix language rather than a germanic one when it says "This is largely due to invasions of England by the Vikings and then the Normans" about why English supposedly has more words than other languages. This type of incorporation of loanwords is common in almost all big languages.
It argues based on dictionaries and effectively debunks why you can't (for comparison I'd like to add that the SAOB of the Swedish Academy lists circa 500k words).
There's nothing in this article that says English has the most words other than "So, while English is a clear contender for having the most words and German and Turkish have a large capacity for infinite combinations, all languages end up influencing others." Still, there's no justification for the "clear contender" bit other than the Oxford dictionary having more words than Larousse and Littré.
Feels to me like the article just reinforces the notion (and reality) that you can't even make comparisons like that.
Nevermind the fact that this idea is a well known myth in linguistics and arguing against it is kind of like arguing against flat earth theory.
You don’t really know what you’re talking about
lol ok