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*VOCABULARY* –>
English is a rich language in terms of vocabulary, containing more synonyms than any other language.
There are words which appear on the surface to mean exactly the same thing but which, in fact, have slightly different shades of meaning and must be chosen appropriately if a speaker wants to convey precisely the message intended
Vocabulary
See also: Foreign language influences in English
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It is generally stated that English has around 170,000 words,
(or 220,000 if ‘obsolete words’ are counted)
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this estimate is based on the last full edition of the Oxford English Dictionary from 1989
Over half of these words are nouns, a quarter adjectives, and a seventh verbs. There is one count that puts the English vocabulary at about 1 million words—but that count presumably includes words such as Latin species names, scientific terminology, botanical terms, prefixed and suffixed words, jargon, foreign words of extremely limited English use, and technical acronyms.[220]
Due to its status as an international language, English adopts foreign words quickly, and borrows vocabulary from many other sources. Early studies of English vocabulary by lexicographers, the scholars who formally study vocabulary, compile dictionaries, or both, were impeded by a lack of comprehensive data on actual vocabulary in use from good-quality linguistic corpora,[221] collections of actual written texts and spoken passages. Many statements published before the end of the 20th century about the growth of English vocabulary over time, the dates of first use of various words in English, and the sources of English vocabulary will have to be corrected as new computerised analysis of linguistic corpus data becomes available.[220][222]
Word formation processes
English forms new words from existing words or roots in its vocabulary through a variety of processes. One of the most productive processes in English is conversion,[223] using a word with a different grammatical role, for example using a noun as a verb or a verb as a noun. Another productive word-formation process is nominal compounding,[220][222] producing compound words such as babysitter or ice cream or homesick.[223] A process more common in Old English than in Modern English, but still productive in Modern English, is the use of derivational suffixes (-hood, -ness, -ing, -ility) to derive new words from existing words (especially those of Germanic origin) or stems (especially for words of Latin or Greek origin).
Formation of new words, called neologisms, based on Greek and/or Latin roots (for example television or optometry) is a highly productive process in English and in most modern European languages, so much so that it is often difficult to determine in which language a neologism originated. For this reason, lexicographer Philip Gove attributed many such words to the “international scientific vocabulary” (ISV) when compiling Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (1961). Another active word-formation process in English are acronyms,[224] words formed by pronouncing as a single word abbreviations of longer phrases, e.g. NATO, laser).
Word origins
Main article: Lists of English loanwords by country or language of origin
See also: Linguistic purism in English
Source languages of English vocabulary[7][225]
Latin (29%)
(Old) French, including Anglo-French (29%)
Germanic languages (Old/Middle English, Old Norse, Dutch) (26%)
Greek (6%)
Other languages/unknown (6%)
Derived from proper names (4%)
English, besides forming new words from existing words and their roots, also borrows words from other languages. This adoption of words from other languages is commonplace in many world languages, but English has been especially open to borrowing of foreign words throughout the last 1,000 years.[226] The most commonly used words in English are West Germanic.[227] The words in English learned first by children as they learn to speak, particularly the grammatical words that dominate the word count of both spoken and written texts, are mainly the Germanic words inherited from the earliest periods of the development of Old English.[220]
But one of the consequences of long language contact between French and English in all stages of their development is that the vocabulary of English has a very high percentage of “Latinate” words (derived from French, especially, and also from other Romance languages and Latin). French words from various periods of the development of French now make up one-third of the vocabulary of English.[228] Linguist Anthony Lacoudre estimated that over 40,000 English words are of French origin and may be understood without orthographical change by French speakers.[229] Words of Old Norse origin have entered the English language primarily from the contact between Old Norse and Old English during colonisation of eastern and northern England. Many of these words are part of English core vocabulary, such as egg and knife.[230]
English has also borrowed many words directly from Latin, the ancestor of the Romance languages, during all stages of its development.[222][220] Many of these words had earlier been borrowed into Latin from Greek. Latin or Greek are still highly productive sources of stems used to form vocabulary of subjects learned in higher education such as the sciences, philosophy, and mathematics.[231] English continues to gain new loanwords and calques (“loan translations”) from languages all over the world, and words from languages other than the ancestral Anglo-Saxon language make up about 60% of the vocabulary of English.[232]
English has formal and informal speech registers; informal registers, including child-directed speech, tend to be made up predominantly of words of Anglo-Saxon origin, while the percentage of vocabulary that is of Latinate origin is higher in legal, scientific, and academic texts.[233][234]
English loanwords and calques in other languages
English has had a strong influence on the vocabulary of other languages.[228][235] The influence of English comes from such factors as opinion leaders in other countries knowing the English language, the role of English as a world lingua franca, and the large number of books and films that are translated from English into other languages.[236] That pervasive use of English leads to a conclusion in many places that English is an especially suitable language for expressing new ideas or describing new technologies.
Among varieties of English, it is especially American English that influences other languages.[237]
Some languages, such as Chinese, write words borrowed from English mostly as calques, while others, such as Japanese, readily take in English loanwords written in sound-indicating script.[238]
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Dubbed films and television programmes are an especially fruitful source of English influence on languages in Europe.
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