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Forum URL: http://www.eyrie-productions.com/Forum/dcboard.cgi
Forum Name: Undocumented Features General
Topic ID: 92
Message ID: 38
#38, RE: Standard language?
Posted by Laudre on Sep-02-01 at 02:42 PM
In response to message #36
>The reason English is so wildly inconsistent is because English will take
>these "untranslatable" words and assimilate them. While the sublties and
>connotations might be lost, the central meaning will remain, adding to the
>vocabulary. This is why English has the largest vocabulary of any language.
>Somthing like ~300k words as compared to ~100k words for an "average"
>modern language, IIRC.

The reason that happens is because there exists no academic body that determines what is or isn't English. For instance, for French, there's l'Academie Française, which determines what is and isn't official French. (And in Canadian French, they're even more fascistic about keeping the language pure -- anglicisms that make it into Parisian French are often kept out of Canadian French. For example, in French, it's "le weekend", while in Canadian French, it's "le fin de semaine".)

What happens, then? English becomes harder to learn, because there then becomes many more words and regional mutations that make it harder for a non-native speaker to understand the local variation.

I'm not saying English is a bad language; as a writer, I rather enjoy the language, as it's very playable-with. But it's just an abysmal choice for an international second language. French was better; smaller vocabulary, fewer idioms, much closer connection to a number of other languages (the Romantic languages), and easier to learn.

-- Sean --

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