German language how many words

We will be publishing the follow up very shortly. Stay tuned, and thanks for reading! There is nothing about words being counted. The follow-up will be coming this week! I hear here, Arabic or Hebrew has many words because additional words are composed from roots.

What about Occitan, were you can have 40 words describing aspects of one concept, for example a meadow? Or Polish, where you can derive tens of words from one words , seven cases, because of declensions, aspects, etc.

Quite complex and poetic language also. Also this language allows for creating new words in poetic sense, but those are of course not compound words like in German. So, it is difficult to say which language has the most vocabulary, as which criteria we apply?

And what makes things a little bit more complicated, some native speakers make claims out of ethnic pride, yet how many linguists really researched this subject in depth? Very often those are claims, that such and such language is the richest, are made by amateur linguists. I have my doubts about it. Hi Elizaveta, Thanks for reading. Also the language is similar to English and it is not at the top.

Thanks, DS Aswai! Sanskrit is indeed a very old language, though not the oldest. The consensus is Tamil takes that title. How about Sumerian? The oldest text known to man is the Epic of Gilgamesh after all. Hebrew is different to Arabic but Hebrew has a similar meaning as it was originated from god but got changed by your people but there is still some of it which is true.

Thanks for reading Hadi! We will likely be exploring other languages in this fashion so be on the lookout for that! Eu podia me admirar e maravilhar pq estudei Latim durante 8 anos.

Exemplos: quantum satis qs , ad libem. In the past, the Guinness Book of Records ranked the Greek language as the richest in the world with 5 million words and 70 million word types! Well, many of these words have been widely borrowed into other languages, including English. Take a look, for example at medical, musical, or historical terms and expressions. Hi, guys I am looking for an Arabic-Hungarian dictionary; does someone know where I can buy such a book?

A link would be helpful. Many thanks,. Hi Andres! We actually have since posted an entire blog dedicated to Arabic. Croatian language has Such an interesting topic going by the range of comments that it has provoked. Some languages, like English, use many words borrowed from other languages. Original words show the creativity of a language. The people who spoke that language invented a name for an idea and represented it through a series of sounds to make up a word.

That word is part of a larger system that their language has developed. So the language reflects the nature of people who spoke it. In fact, one of the criterion for defining a classical language is that the words it uses were all developed from within the community and not borrowed from other groups.

The basis for many hundred of languages? Greek with all inflections has more than 6. You all are babbling about Arabic having However, seeing as the Hebrew language- ancient Hebrew to be precise-is older than classical Arabic implies that the latter is an evolved form of the Hebrew language.

This is backed up by the fact that the Nabataeans who were Arabs were nomadic and originally wrote pieces of literature in Aramaic though they then switched to Arabic. The fact that they were nomads means that they may have been influenced proof that they were influenced exists in the form of Greek-looking sculptures in their temples when they finally decided to settle down.

Proof is also shown in the textiles of the clothing they use as tents when they were still nomads. Older languages such as the ancient Mesopotamian family of languages: Assyrian, Babylonian, Aramaic and the oldest known language: Sumerian, as is proven by a series of ancient Sumerian texts called the Epic of Gilgamesh being the oldest text known to man. These languages may have had more words than the Arabic have today.

Not to mention that most of the Ancient Greek papyrus scrolls that have withered away without being read by archeologists may have contained more words than the modern Greek language has. Incredible arguments! And should words in agglutinative languages include all possible agglutinations, some of which become sentences in translation. So, should all possible sentences in non-agglutinative languages be included?? Added: And although this about richness of a language and not individual speakers, even the best of translators is limited to perhaps fewer than , distinct individual words, not including various cases, tenses, etc.

So, is it total word count that provides richness? Since English is hugely composed of loanwords and has no compunction against borrowing at will, should all languages be included in English? Yes, ridiculous, but it does beg the question of what restricts the richness of any language that will borrow and incorporate as needed or to provide nuance? I think that part of the richness of a language is how many people can actually communicate with it.

Part of the reason that english is an international trade language is that you dont actually have to know as much of it to have conversations with native speakers. I for one live in a college town with a large number of international students as well as a fair number of immigrants.

In nebraska. Luis O, I concur. One thing I would like to know, who counts these millions of words in a particular language? After counting the first one or two million, who certifies that words are not repeated in the next 10 million?

By the way, in my humble opinion, the beauty of a language comes from the way the speaker or writer is able to convey, describe or impart information, with the creative use of the senses, passion, emotion, keenness and intensity in such a way as to deeply affect the sensibilities of the reader or listener. I believe this is achievable in any language. It all depends on the one orchestrating the words.

Or so I think. This is the right blog for anybody who wishes to find out about this topic. You understand so much its almost hard to argue with you not that I actually will need to…HaHa. You certainly put a fresh spin on a subject that has been written about for a long time.

Wonderful stuff, just great! Hi Fatal! Thanks for the kind words. We are glad you enjoyed this! Check out our blog on Arabic, too. Good post. I learn something new and challenging on blogs I stumbleupon every day. We are glad you liked it! Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

March 7, But wait. The simplest problem in comparing the size of different languages is inflection. Does that make Spanish richer in word count? Moreover, many languages habitually build long words from short ones. Turkish not only crams words together but does so in ways that make whole, meaningful sentences. Counting the Words in the Dictionary Another way of measuring the vocabulary in a language and comparing counts is by counting the number of words listed in a standard authoritative dictionary in that language.

So, which language is richest in words? Let us ask a different, and we think more important question: Does it really matter? About Interpreters and Translators, Inc. Share on. Is Anything Untranslatable? December 7, Business in Brazil? Know the Customs and Culture. April 18, Reply Arun April 17, at am I would like to know following: How many words are there in Sanskrit and Marathi language.

Reply Adam January 26, at am Arabic has more than a million words making it the richest language. Reply admin February 3, at pm Hi Adam! Reply Error May 4, at am Yes, he is right.

Reply Varoon April 25, at pm What is more important? Reply Vineet April 21, at pm You are right…. Reply anonymous April 21, at pm cool. Reply Rod April 22, at am Another interesting topic is which language has the longest non compound words? Reply Annie Pagano April 22, at pm That would, indeed, be an interesting study!

Reply Thomas July 23, at pm Finnish and German have words that are some of the longest in existence. Reply Steven Hunyadi December 29, at am Interestingly, the Hungarian language was totally left out from the lists. Reply Jim April 22, at am Hey why have you not put the Greek language in this article? Reply Annie Pagano April 22, at pm This article was written based off of just a couple of research sources. Reply Human July 8, at pm Greek language has 15 million words and 75 million word types.

Reply Cyrus June 3, at am I found similar results. Greek is among the contenders for the next blog like this! Reply Annie Pagano April 22, at pm Wow!! Thank you for sharing! Reply Liam Davidsson December 28, at pm I am curious who are the scholars that you have talked to!

Guest April 19, at am Sanskrit is the oldest language existing, yes but it is not the oldest language to exist The oldest known language is Sumerian. Reply mo April 29, at am do you Persian language has about milion words? Reply Annie Pagano April 29, at pm Amazing!

Thank you for sharing. Reply Zaky June 30, at pm Arabic too, the words meaning might depend on the context of the sentence. Reply King of sun September 25, at pm I agree with origin sky.

Reply Pierre December 13, at pm Dude, your nationalist rhetoric is bordering on dumb. Fj February 24, at am Where is the Arabic language? It is the richest language with more than 12 million words.

Instead they simply reflect its current usage. And the list of new words, Anglicized and otherwise, is growing rapidly.

In , when the dictionary debuted, it included 27, entries. Now it boasts , words. So which words should we learn? Prof Webb says the most effective way to be able to speak a language quickly is to pick the to 1, lemmas which appear most frequently in a language, and learn those. These lemmas are a lot more valuable than other words, simply because they're used far more often. For example it's much more useful to know the word "house" than the word "abode," and you'll get fewer odd looks if you say "perhaps" rather than "peradventure".

So is there light at the end of the tunnel for our frustrated German student? Well it depends why he wants to learn the language. Eight hundred lemmas will help you speak a language in a day-to-day setting, but to understand dialogue in film or TV you'll need to know the 3, most common lemmas.

And if you want to get your head around the written word - so novels, newspapers, excellently-written BBC articles - you need to learn 8, to 9, lemmas. If you want to find out what it would be like to restrict your native tongue to the most common 1, words, Theo Sanderson has created a site where you can test your linguistic skills or lack thereof.

Good luck, or as the Italians would enigmatically say "in bocca al lupo! You can listen to the latest edition of More or Less, and others from the series, online and via the programme podcast.

Critical window for learning a language. BBC: Learning English. Image source, Getty Images.