Language with the largest vocabulary

Im pretty sure its Chinese.Zerocrossings

Im pretty sure its Chinese.Zerocrossings

Chinese is really funky. It's more of a language family with a bunch of different dialects. 

Thai and Khmer have pretty big vocabularies.

The Khmer language has has 33 consonants and 24 vowels  

Thai is similar with 44 consonants and 30 vowels.

Thai and Khmer have pretty big vocabularies.

The Khmer language has has 33 consonants and 24 vowels

Thai is similar with 44 consonants and 30 vowels.

Shad0ki11

you seem to have Vocabulary confused with consonants and vowels, nubcake.

[QUOTE="Shad0ki11"]

Thai and Khmer have pretty big vocabularies.

The Khmer language has has 33 consonants and 24 vowels

Thai is similar with 44 consonants and 30 vowels.

 

 

 

irelevent

you seem to have Vocabulary confused with consonants and vowels, nubcake.

You can make so many different words out of those though. 

[QUOTE="irelevent"][QUOTE="Shad0ki11"]

Thai and Khmer have pretty big vocabularies.

The Khmer language has has 33 consonants and 24 vowels

Thai is similar with 44 consonants and 30 vowels.

Shad0ki11

you seem to have Vocabulary confused with consonants and vowels, nubcake.

You can make so many different words out of those though.

yea, but with more vowels and consonants, you need less words.

[QUOTE="Shad0ki11"][QUOTE="irelevent"]

 

you seem to have Vocabulary confused with consonants and vowels, nubcake.

irelevent

You can make so many different words out of those though.

yea, but with more vowels and consonants, you need less words.

Bah. Fine. 

:lol: at the people saying English. 

I'd say one of the Asian languages. Just look at Japanese and Chinese...they've got different words describing one thing depending on your mood. 

In english we have a word for almost everything.

In chinese, this is not the case. They must combine certain words to name things.

:lol: at the people saying English. 

I'd say one of the Asian languages. Just look at Japanese and Chinese...they've got different words describing one thing depending on your mood. 

jointed

It actually appears to be English (unless you count something like Finnish which has the potential for an infinite number of words). This explains it pretty well: http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=512132

English is the most "Universal" of all languages and thus, as it has many many words from many other languages has a vast vocabulary. The rest is better described in that link.

It is actually English:

http://www.hello-online.ru/knowhow.php?comid=70

http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/english.htm

http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2001/JohnnyLing.shtml

English is, most languages only have one word that describe something while English has several.

It's because English has many "parental" languages like French, German, Latin, Gaelic, Spanish etc.

:lol: at the people saying English.

I'd say one of the Asian languages. Just look at Japanese and Chinese...they've got different words describing one thing depending on your mood.

jointed

my sister speaks fluent Japanese and says it is the exact opposite. There can be one word, but depending on how you say it the word can mean 10 different things. That is why Japanese is so challenging to learn.

:lol: at the people saying English.

I'd say one of the Asian languages. Just look at Japanese and Chinese...they've got different words describing one thing depending on your mood.

jointed

I am pretty sure English has one of the most extensive if not the largest vocabulary of any language. If you think about it there is a word for almost everything. In Asian languages such as Japanese there are actually loan words adapted from English to Japanese. For example the word for cheese in Japanese is chizu. This means that there are words that did not originally exist in languages like Japanese but must be adopted to accomodate a language such as English. Of course my example was not the best. In any case I don't believe that different politeness levels count as different words either. To those arguing that Chinese has a word for every syllable, well that is mostly true but it does not mean that you need a different syllable to make a new word. Chinese uses the tones of syllables extensively to create new words. For example "shi" can be translated many different ways depending on which of the four tones it uses. In one case "shi" may be used as the verb of being and in another it may mean the number ten. One should be aware that when I say Chinese I am referring to Mandarin as it is the only dialect I have experience in. I may be wrong in some of my arguments as I am by no means a linguist, but I am not coming from a completely uninformed position either as I am currently studying Japanese and Chinese as well as having already taken three years of Latin.

my sister speaks fluent Japanese and says it is the exact opposite. There can be one word, but depending on how you say it the word can mean 10 different things. That is why Japanese is so challenging to learn.

mrbojangles25

Describing 'articles'...you know? Wakarimashidte (t is censored), Wakarimasu..etc.

This same logic can be used on Finnish, wich would have an almost infinite amount of words. 

[QUOTE="jointed"]

:lol: at the people saying English.

I'd say one of the Asian languages. Just look at Japanese and Chinese...they've got different words describing one thing depending on your mood.

mrbojangles25

my sister speaks fluent Japanese and says it is the exact opposite. There can be one word, but depending on how you say it the word can mean 10 different things. That is why Japanese is so challenging to learn.

It is more so in Chinese I think. I am not saying that your sister is wrong, but ten different ways is a bit of an exaggeration. Japanese and any other east Asian languages such as Korean or Chinese is naturally more difficult for a Westerner to learn because the writing system and grammar is totally different. Not only must one learn to read and write a language like Japanese from scratch but the intonation of the voice and pronunciation of syllables can be hard to master as many do not exist in a language like English.

[QUOTE="jointed"]

:lol: at the people saying English.

I'd say one of the Asian languages. Just look at Japanese and Chinese...they've got different words describing one thing depending on your mood.

ChevelleFan

I am pretty sure English has one of the most extensive if not the largest vocabulary of any language. If you think about it there is a word for almost everything. In Asian languages such as Japanese there are actually loan words adapted from English to Japanese. For example the word for cheese in Japanese is chizu. This means that there are words that did not originally exist in languages like Japanese but must be adopted to accomodate a language such as English. Of course my example was not the best. In any case I don't believe that different politeness levels count as different words either. To those arguing that Chinese has a word for every syllable, well that is mostly true but it does not mean that you need a different syllable to make a new word. Chinese uses the tones of syllables extensively to create new words. For example "shi" can be translated many different ways depending on which of the four tones it uses. In one case "shi" may be used as the verb of being and in another it may mean the number ten. One should be aware that when I say Chinese I am referring to Mandarin as it is the only dialect I have experience in. I may be wrong in some of my arguments as I am by no means a linguist, but I am not coming from a completely uninformed position either as I am currently studying Japanese and Chinese as well as having already taken three years of Latin.

Wait, if you've been studying latin for 3 years, you'd know that English has borrowed words from both the Spanish, French and Lain languages. Does these words not count all of a sudden or what?

Describing 'articles'...you know? Wakarimashidte (t is censored), Wakarimasu..etc.

This same logic can be used on Finnish, wich would have an almost infinite amount of words. 

jointed

Which is true, in that sense you're correct. However, many of those words are like Contractions. Or combinations of two or more words.

English is the language that has the most defined words.

[QUOTE="ChevelleFan"][QUOTE="jointed"]

:lol: at the people saying English.

I'd say one of the Asian languages. Just look at Japanese and Chinese...they've got different words describing one thing depending on your mood.

jointed

I am pretty sure English has one of the most extensive if not the largest vocabulary of any language. If you think about it there is a word for almost everything. In Asian languages such as Japanese there are actually loan words adapted from English to Japanese. For example the word for cheese in Japanese is chizu. This means that there are words that did not originally exist in languages like Japanese but must be adopted to accomodate a language such as English. Of course my example was not the best. In any case I don't believe that different politeness levels count as different words either. To those arguing that Chinese has a word for every syllable, well that is mostly true but it does not mean that you need a different syllable to make a new word. Chinese uses the tones of syllables extensively to create new words. For example "shi" can be translated many different ways depending on which of the four tones it uses. In one case "shi" may be used as the verb of being and in another it may mean the number ten. One should be aware that when I say Chinese I am referring to Mandarin as it is the only dialect I have experience in. I may be wrong in some of my arguments as I am by no means a linguist, but I am not coming from a completely uninformed position either as I am currently studying Japanese and Chinese as well as having already taken three years of Latin.

Wait, if you've been studying latin for 3 years, you'd know that English has borrowed words from both the Spanish, French and Lain languages. Does these words not count all of a sudden or what?

Italian, Spanish, French, etc. were all derived from Latin, so I guess we exclude them because none of those languages count :roll:. The point I was trying to get at is that English does not contain direct imitations of Spanish or Latin words (yes there are some actual French words used in English). English is derived from Latin to get words like "perfect" which comes from the Latin "per + facit" which literally means thoroughly made. Derived words from Latin is what makes up a large majority of the English language but it is not like people developed English and then realized that they needed to adopt Latin words for things they did not originally have words for. I am not trying to knock on the Asian languages which I think are far more beautiful than any Western language, but you can't argue that some words in Japanese are not taken directly from English especially when they are written in Katakana (the Japanese script used mostly for foreign words). I am not saying that those words don't count, I am just trying to show that English obviously has alot of words that some languages don't have native words for. I also stated that I wasn't claiming that English was the definate answer to the question posed by the TC.

:lol: at the people saying English. 

I'd say one of the Asian languages. Just look at Japanese and Chinese...they've got different words describing one thing depending on your mood. 

jointed

actually I speak japanese and I think your wrong, the language is much more simple than english vocabulary wise. I mean check a thesaurus, english has like 10 words that can mean the same exact thing.

Probably Spanish, It was a huge amount of regionalisms, word variants and verb conjugations.Tuky06

[QUOTE="mrbojangles25"][QUOTE="jointed"]

:lol: at the people saying English.

I'd say one of the Asian languages. Just look at Japanese and Chinese...they've got different words describing one thing depending on your mood.

ChevelleFan

my sister speaks fluent Japanese and says it is the exact opposite. There can be one word, but depending on how you say it the word can mean 10 different things. That is why Japanese is so challenging to learn.

It is more so in Chinese I think. I am not saying that your sister is wrong, but ten different ways is a bit of an exaggeration. Japanese and any other east Asian languages such as Korean or Chinese is naturally more difficult for a Westerner to learn because the writing system and grammar is totally different. Not only must one learn to read and write a language like Japanese from scratch but the intonation of the voice and pronunciation of syllables can be hard to master as many do not exist in a language like English.

i've started to study chinese and i am amazed at how a lot of the sentence structure is similar to english.

Im pretty sure its Chinese.Zerocrossings

[QUOTE="Zerocrossings"]Im pretty sure its Chinese.foxhound_fox

Exactly. And theres tons of combinations you can make with 1800 characters (Im pretty sure there are more though).

[QUOTE="Zerocrossings"]Im pretty sure its Chinese.foxhound_fox

yeah, dian hua

electric vision= dian shi= tv  lol

[QUOTE="foxhound_fox"][QUOTE="Zerocrossings"]Im pretty sure its Chinese.SupraGT

yeah, dian hua

electric vision= dian shi= tv lol

And electric brain=dian nao= PC :lol:

[QUOTE="SupraGT"]

[QUOTE="foxhound_fox"]
I am pretty sure Chinese has one of the smallest vocabularies. Something like 1800 words. They combine words to form other words... "lighting talk" is telephone.

English has the largest vocabulary; 550,000 entires in the Webster's English dictionary.Zerocrossings

yeah, dian hua

electric vision= dian shi= tv lol

And electric brain=dian nao= PC :lol:

yeah, it's awesome :lol:

it's funny bc movie is electric shadow (dianying), so im guessing they got it form projectors.

I don't know.

All I know is that Chinese is ****ing hard, and I'm a Chinese who speaks chinese everyday.

Well I think it's french.

It's widely considered one of the hardest language to learn and master, waaay more than English or Spanish or even Arabic.

I speak the four of them, mainly french, english and arabic, but I don't master Spanish at all, and French is very hard.

And as far as I know, French has much more words than English. 

But that's just me. There are over 7000 languages across the Earth. 

Well I think it's french.

It's widely considered one of the hardest language to learn and master, waaay more than English or Spanish or even Arabic.

I speak the four of them, mainly french, english and arabic, but I don't master Spanish at all, and French is very hard.

But that's just me. There are over 7000 languages across the Earth. 

BaraChat

Well I think it's french.

It's widely considered one of the hardest language to learn and master, waaay more than English or Spanish or even Arabic.

I speak the four of them, mainly french, english and arabic, but I don't master Spanish at all, and French is very hard.

And as far as I know, French has much more words than English. 

But that's just me. There are over 7000 languages across the Earth. 

BaraChat

REALLY? I shouldn't have taken french in highschool :?

[QUOTE="BaraChat"]

Well I think it's french.

It's widely considered one of the hardest language to learn and master, waaay more than English or Spanish or even Arabic.

I speak the four of them, mainly french, english and arabic, but I don't master Spanish at all, and French is very hard.

But that's just me. There are over 7000 languages across the Earth. 

6_volts

Yeah I agree I can't put myself in other people's shoes. But I said that French is "widely considered" one of the hardest language to learn.

Of course I am a wee bit biased because I live in a french speaking country (I'm Lebanese, actually). But I've learned english easily, although I'm no Tolkien.

If I could I would just go on and learn portuguese, german, japanese, hindi, afrikaan, russian, thai, anything.

It's impossible to know the world's largest language in terms of vocabulary; however, English, as it comes from a long line of different languages and their mixtures, is most certainly a contender, if it could only be proven, as English has over 500,000 words and over 1 million if you count scientific words.

http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Vocabulary