I feel offended by gringo. It's probably just the way it sounds, but it makes me wanna slap whoever says it.

I don't really want to start yet another debate on what words should be insulting or shouldn't be, I just wanted to point out the fact that some people (including some Japanese people) consider "jap" to be insulting, so you should be careful using it. That's all.

Quote:I guessed 渡米 correctly when i saw it in your post (hadn't seen it before). What's so funny about transiting to America? You know 米 means America in tons of words right?

Well to steer the conversation back to the topic at hand, the initial question was about 'brutal amounts of vocab'. I found 渡米 funny because of the level of specificity.

拳, 拳骨, 鉄拳, 拳固, 米利堅 = fist
不語, 無言, 不言, 森閑, サイレンス, 不言不語, 無音, 黙然, 沈黙, 音無し = silence

Es2Kay Wrote:拳, 拳骨, 鉄拳, 拳固, 米利堅 = fist
不語, 無言, 不言, 森閑, サイレンス, 不言不語, 無音, 黙然, 沈黙, 音無し = silence

silence, quiet, soundless, calm, hush, hush-hush, lull, muteness, noiselessness, quiescence, speechlessness, still, stillness.

Some of those drift away from the meaning of "silence" and all have different nuance... but then those japanese words are hardly exact synonyms either.

Es2Kay Wrote:拳, 拳骨, 鉄拳, 拳固, 米利堅 = fist
不語, 無言, 不言, 森閑, サイレンス, 不言不語, 無音, 黙然, 沈黙, 音無し = silence

closed hand, mitt, knuckle sandwich, paw, duke
quiet, calm, hush, lull, absence of sound, mute, noiselessness, dead air, taciturnity

Es2Kay Wrote:拳, 拳骨, 鉄拳, 拳固, 米利堅 = fist
不語, 無言, 不言, 森閑, サイレンス, 不言不語, 無音, 黙然, 沈黙, 音無し = silence

I'm a little confused. Did you list all this without looking up what the words meant outside of Rikaichan? ^_^ That's so weird!

You might want to check out Japanese WordNet (which is still growing): e.g. 森閑

Besides the hypernyms and such, I love how it provides parallel Japanese and English definitions (translated by the linguists involved with the construction of Japanese Wordnet, from what I gather).

http://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/

拳 = 5本の手の指を折り曲げて握りしめたもの。 にぎりこぶし。げんこつ。げんこ。
拳骨 = にぎりこぶし。げんこ。
鉄拳 = 堅く握りしめたこぶし。げんこつ。
拳固 = にぎりこぶし。げんこつ。
米利堅 = げんこつ。

How is this any different?

Got to admit, japanese is preponderate with noun synonyms.

P.S. nest0r tnx for the link, very useful.

and with "silence" i just wanted to show that all of it can be translated using one word. (regardless of the carrying meaning)

I wouldn't really call that a translation, but an insufficient decontextualized glossing.

All languages have tonnes of semantically related words that take on more nuanced meanings through contextual usage. I don't think Japanese is really special in that regard, though the orthography introduces some fun refinements. Apparently English has the largest number, at least according to this paper's research: http://www.linguist.org.cn/doc/uc200507/uc20050718.pdf

I think, in this point English and Japanese are very similar. The paper in the link above states that there's a Latin equivalent for every native English word (help-aid, bodily-corporeal). In Japanese, there are all the kanji-compound words with Chinese readings. For every native Japanese verb, there is an equivalent "Chinese" compound+する-Verb (学ぶ - 学習する, 飛ぶ - 飛揚する, 眠る - 睡眠する).

(And, as for the discussion if we really *need* all these words: Of course, languages would be *simpler* - but they would be less poetic, creative and expressive. Everything would look like this: http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan)

Es2Kay Wrote:http://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/

拳 = 5本の手の指を折り曲げて握りしめたもの。 にぎりこぶし。げんこつ。げんこ。
拳骨 = にぎりこぶし。げんこ。
鉄拳 = 堅く握りしめたこぶし。げんこつ。
拳固 = にぎりこぶし。げんこつ。
米利堅 = げんこつ。

How is this any different?

You can't really rely on a kokugo dictionary like that to show you the way in which words are used. 拳 and 拳骨 are the ones you're likely to see. 鉄拳 is kind of a literary or poetic word (or video games), and 拳固 is typically used in the fixed phrase 拳固を食らわす. 米利堅 I have never heard of; it appears to be a (possibly outdated) slang term.

Quote:Got to admit, japanese is preponderate with noun synonyms.

No more so than other languages, if you use unabridged dictionaries to find your words and include obsolete slang.

Quote:and with "silence" i just wanted to show that all of it can be translated using one word. (regardless of the carrying meaning)

You can make the same claim with any language if you use inexact translations:

eat, consume, take in, ingest, swallow, chow down, have a meal, devour, dine, munch, sup, breakfast = 食べる

Japanese learners are a little atypical among language learners. For one thing, they make heavy use of SRS, something that's not as common among, say, learners of European languages. As a result, learners face an inordinate amount of words they think they need to know before they can speak. But reality is not quite so.

The words the OP listed don't need to be learned at the same; there is a gradual slope from more common to less common words and you should be learning them as you encounter them in real life, meaning more or less in order of frequency. Then you learn, one by one, that new words offer slight nuances.

SRS is an artificial medium that gives the impression that less common words need to be learned at the same time as more common words, but that shouldn't be the case.

Eh, don't blame the SRS. People need to design their own system of how they use it, what they put in and how it's integrated with their goals and native language encounters.

yudantaiteki Wrote:拳 and 拳骨 are the ones you're likely to see. 鉄拳 is kind of a literary or poetic word (or video games), and 拳固 is typically used in the fixed phrase 拳固を食らわす.

How.. do I know that kind of information? That it sounds poetical or that this and that phrase is typically used in this and that situation? Sounds like this knowledge requires the status of a native~

Tori-kun Wrote:

yudantaiteki Wrote:拳 and 拳骨 are the ones you're likely to see. 鉄拳 is kind of a literary or poetic word (or video games), and 拳固 is typically used in the fixed phrase 拳固を食らわす.

How.. do I know that kind of information? That it sounds poetical or that this and that phrase is typically used in this and that situation? Sounds like this knowledge requires the status of a native~

Developing native-like language intuition through the cultivation of a ‘mental corpus’ of Japanese garnered through study and experience over time is the ideal, no? ^_^

Tori-kun Wrote:

yudantaiteki Wrote:拳 and 拳骨 are the ones you're likely to see. 鉄拳 is kind of a literary or poetic word (or video games), and 拳固 is typically used in the fixed phrase 拳固を食らわす.

How.. do I know that kind of information? That it sounds poetical or that this and that phrase is typically used in this and that situation? Sounds like this knowledge requires the status of a native~

A combination of experience, dictionary searches, and google.

nest0r Wrote:Eh, don't blame the SRS. People need to design their own system of how they use it, what they put in and how it's integrated with their goals and native language encounters.

Fine. Then blame it on those who use SRS without having a previous knowledge of how languages work and how they are acquired.

vix86 Wrote:English has the largest vocabulary on the planet I am sure.

I always smile when I see comments like this (X language has the largest number of words). I think we all know way too few languages to say such statements. And I think almost all of these statements are biased.

gombost Wrote:

vix86 Wrote:English has the largest vocabulary on the planet I am sure.

I always smile when I see comments like this (X language has the largest number of words). I think we all know way too few languages to say such statements. And I think almost all of these statements are biased.

In addition to this statement (while I know my english may not be the best english a foreigner has acquired ever) I never had to "actively" study english, I just learnt it through some kind of osthmosis (is this word spelled like this in english?) while I was a little kid playing videogames and/or crawling through different sorts of media.
I was having this conversation about languages with some classmates the other day and we all agreed in english being a tremendously easy language to learn (as opposed to french, japanese or any other language) which many people don't need to attend to any sort of academy or whatever.
I've always seen english as a brutally practical yet unesthetical rough language. I'm sorry if I offended anyone with these acertions.
Japanese on the other hand...

damicore Wrote:

gombost Wrote:

vix86 Wrote:English has the largest vocabulary on the planet I am sure.

I always smile when I see comments like this (X language has the largest number of words). I think we all know way too few languages to say such statements. And I think almost all of these statements are biased.

In addition to this statement (while I know my english may not be the best english a foreigner has acquired ever) I never had to "actively" study english, I just learnt it through some kind of osthmosis (is this word spelled like this in english?) while I was a little kid playing videogames and/or crawling through different sorts of media.
I was having this conversation about languages with some classmates the other day and we all agreed in english being a tremendously easy language to learn (as opposed to french, japanese or any other language) which many people don't need to attend to any sort of academy or whatever.
I've always seen english as a brutally practical yet unesthetical rough language. I'm sorry if I offended anyone with these acertions.
Japanese on the other hand...

osthmosis - osmosis
unesthetical - unaesthetic
acertions - assertions

Sorry, I'm quite fond of spelling

I think unaesthetic is a bit harsh though, English is a beautiful language!

damicore Wrote:In addition to this statement (while I know my english may not be the best english a foreigner has acquired ever) I never had to "actively" study english, I just learnt it through some kind of osthmosis (is this word spelled like this in english?) while I was a little kid playing videogames and/or crawling through different sorts of media.
I was having this conversation about languages with some classmates the other day and we all agreed in english being a tremendously easy language to learn (as opposed to french, japanese or any other language) which many people don't need to attend to any sort of academy or whatever.
I've always seen english as a brutally practical yet unesthetical rough language. I'm sorry if I offended anyone with these acertions.
Japanese on the other hand...

I think every language is beautiful in its own way I know quite a few people who speak two languages excluding their mother tongue (actually I'm also one of these, because I speak English and German fluently and I also study Japanese). Usually these people say that English is quite easy to learn. I also think English grammar is quite easy and if you speak a Germanic or a Latin language you'll find loads of similar words in English and in that other language. But this has nothing to do with the size of vocabulary

Agglutinative languages also have a tremendous amount of words (like Japanese), depending on the definition of "word". Well, Hungarian, my mother tongue is an agglutinative language, so I can show a nice example:

I read (a book) - Én olvasok (egy könyvet)
You read (a book) - Te olvasol (egy könyvet)
He/she/it reads (a book) - Ő olvas (egy könyvet)
We read (a book) - Mi olvasunk (egy könyvet)
You read (a book) - Ti olvastok (egy könyvet)
They read (a book) - Ők olvasnak (egy könyvet)

and

I read (the book) - Én olvasom (a könyvet)
You read (the book) - Te olvasod (a könyvet)
He/she/it reads (the book) - Ő olvassa (a könyvet)
We read (the book) - Mi olvassuk (a könyvet)
You read (the book) - Ti olvassátok (a könyvet)
They read (the book) - Ők olvassák (a könyvet)

In this example English uses 2 words - read and reads. On the other hand, Hungarian uses 12 if you consider every form as an individual word.

Please don't misunderstand me, I do not say that one of these languages has more words than the other.
In my experience, there are topics where English, German and Hungarian have much more words than the other two (and probably the same is true for Japanese but I have only learnt some 2000 words so far).

I'm the same way about spanish ,but english is not my native language (I try my best though) so I thank you for your corrections (though "unaesthetic" and "assertions"... I should actually know how to spell them, you got me kind of ashamed there haha).

It's just a matter of preferences anyways, I just don't like how most of the words seem to be so short, and several things I find quite hard to explain as they belong to the subjective spectrum of thoughts and feelings haha.
Either that, or I might just have a problem with people sometimes using english words over here and thinking they sound cool doing so (usually really lame people do that). I always think of it in the 'Spanish is such a beautiful language, why would you ruin it using words like "*****" or "awesome" ' way. Believe it or not it's quite a common practice between ignorant european/northamerican wannabe teenagers who are usually pretty ignorant about their own culture and the so adored by them european/northamerican culture aswell.
Think of it as reading a post from an annoying otaku who places some wrongly used kana words here and there usually taken from some lame 12-year-old oriented anime.

My rant is over, please proceed with the thread as it was intended to

gombost Wrote:In my experience, there are topics where English, German and Hungarian have much more words than the other two (and probably the same is true for Japanese but I have only learnt some 2000 words so far).

What are some examples of topics in which one of English, German or Hungarian has more words than the other two?

As for Japanese: Buddhism

fakewookie Wrote:

gombost Wrote:In my experience, there are topics where English, German and Hungarian have much more words than the other two (and probably the same is true for Japanese but I have only learnt some 2000 words so far).

What are some examples of topics in which one of English, German or Hungarian has more words than the other two?

As for Japanese: Buddhism

It's not really a topic, but English has a lot of collective nouns. I don't speak German or Hungarian but I did try out whether they have a similar number and I haven't been able to find anything. I'm pretty sure Japanese doesn't have them.