this has been nagging me for quite a while and when I saw the thread about the different nuances of these words: ツアー、旅、旅行、行楽、遠足、見物、観光 It really worried me.
I mean, it seems to be too many words! like a unique word for transfer student instead of 転校学生 (転校生) or a single word for "new car" like 新車　instead of 新しい車.　there are also 地平線, 水平線 and はて.
I'm quite new to japanese actually but this strange words for some stuff are starting to scare me. There were lots and lots of examples that were bothering me in the last couple of weeks that I can't actually remember right now.
Like if I listen しんしゃ in a conversation where I can't see the kanji how am I supposed to suppose his talking about his brand 新しい車!?
Does anybody know how japanese compares in number of words to english and most commonly spoken languages (spanish, french, german)?
I'm probably exaggerating things, but fluent japanese seems so distant sometimes it's frustrating considering how easily I could hold a grasp on english and french.

There's a lot of vocab, but I'm pretty sure that English has the largest amount of vocab of any language. Given it takes words from Greek, Latin, French, German and anywhere else. According to the OED there are 170,000+ words 'in common use'.

Japanese probably only seems like they are more because none of the words are familiar apart from katakana loanwords. If you learnt English or French from Portuguese then a LOT of the words would be similar, that's why it was far easier to learn. For Japanese you have to pretty much start from scratch.

English has the largest vocabulary on the planet I am sure. We have so many adjectives and words for very specific things, most of which you would never use because they are 7-8 letters long. This is why in English its bad form to reuse the same word over and over in a paper, and why your teacher would tell you "look for a another word than using 'exquisite' 5 times." In Japanese though reusing the same word over and over is fine.

Some of the words in Japanese that have the same meaning though, but are made simply of kanji (新車　ｖｓ．　新しい車　might be a good example) are what you would call 固い語, they are the "7 letter words" that you want to use in your final semester essay, not the words you want to use with friends.

Many of these words though you'll quickly come to pick the meaning up on though as you learn more words and kanji, you'll be able to intuit the meaning without having to search it.

Yeah English past their Millionth word a little while ago. It was 'Web 2.0'. 'n00b' and 'Jai Ho' were apparently close contenders. I read this on the times online they said it includes words used in other languages but are still english so every Japanlish word they create boost our numbers.

新車 is no more a distinct word than "new car" is in English.
It may look like one, but you are viewing Japanese filtered through the structure of your own language. Eventually you will learn to recognize compounding patterns and you will not need to bother "learning" new compounds as you encounter them.

Also, 新車 is by far more common in speech than 新しい車 and they have slightly different meanings in practice, but yeah generally 熟語 do tend to be more common in written language.

Without any other context..
新車が欲しい: Want a new car (emphasis on being brand new from factory)
新しい車が欲しい: Want a new car (emphasis on replacing current car. Replacement might even be used.)

I know but right now it seems they could easily have a word for "old blue car that I crashed the other day" and it's kind of frustrating haha.

Wikipedia Wrote:Comparisons of the vocabulary size of English to that of other languages are generally not taken very seriously by linguists and lexicographers. Besides the fact that dictionaries will vary in their policies for including and counting entries, what is meant by a given language and what counts as a word do not have simple definitions. Also, a definition of word that works for one language may not work well in another, with differences in morphology and orthography making cross-linguistic definitions and word-counting difficult, and potentially giving very different results. Linguist Geoffrey K. Pullum has gone so far as to compare concerns over vocabulary size (and the notion that a supposedly larger lexicon leads to "greater richness and precision") to an obsession with penis length.

Does that mean I'm concerned japs might have a larger penis than I do?

damicore Wrote:I know but right now it seems they could easily have a word for "old blue car that I crashed the other day" and it's kind of frustrating haha.

An agglutinative language will have a 'word' for that.

You can get most of the way there with Japanese, but only 漢語 are somewhat agglutinative so it's difficult to portray who did the crashing.
我先日被事故古青車 (my old blue vehicle that was crashed the other day)

Jarvik7 Wrote:

damicore Wrote:I know but right now it seems they could easily have a word for "old blue car that I crashed the other day" and it's kind of frustrating haha.

An agglutinative language will have a word for that.

You can get most of the way there with Japanese, but only 漢語 are somewhat agglutinative so it's difficult to portray who did the crashing.
我先日被事故古青車 (my old blue vehicle that was crashed the other day)

Isn't it somewhat common practice for Japanese newspapers to do this in order to save on space? As I do seem to recall there being a section in one of my "Japanese Grammar Dictionaries" talking about how some particles can be dropped in newspaper articles.

damicore Wrote:Does that mean I'm concerned japs might have a larger penis than I do?

That passage had more to do with people gushing about how rich the vocabulary of their language is in comparison with others, than with language learners concerned about the amount of vocabulary they have to memorize. I think your concern as a learner of Japanese is not "That dude's dick is bigger than mine!", but more of a "Is he gonna put THAT inside me?!"
BTW, that kind of talk is by no means limited to English speakers. I'm sick and tired of my fellow Russians saying that Russian is the most expressive and nuanced language on Earth (most likely because we Russians are apparently the only people with a real soul). And I bet that there are 日本人論 authors out there arguing the exact same things about Japanese.

i have had the same thought as you damicore, and I agree that forming words in Japanese is pretty much a pain. However, it is a pain that get weaker as you keep get better in understanding the language in general. There are some points (already discussed by jarvik7 but still, i will repeat them , as I agree with him) that you should consider and then you will discover it is easier than it looks.

Firstly, most of the synonymous words that Japanese portraits are 漢語 words (build with Chinese kanji) and in most of cases, those words are rather unused in conversation but mostly appear in written, so by understanding the kanji, you can also grasp the meaning. Also, most of them appear only in specific contexts and thus, you may even not find them at all in everyday life. Of course, ones they appear, it is better to learn that they are used only in those situations. This is related to what I call the danger of the dictionary: Looking for a term that has a lot of entries and you think all of them mean the same and that you can use them all the same. In that case, it is better to ask a native or even google each word to find which has more hits and maybe that is the one you need to use.

Second, the use of 漢語 depends a lot in the context (as almost anything in Japanese). Remember that Japanese have lots of homo-phonic words (same pronunciation, different kanji and meaning). In a conversation, the context is crucial to understand and assign the correct meaning. As a foreigner, this is the most difficult part but as you learn kanji, you will discover that you will be able to figure out the meaning by sorting the different possibilities. Just the other day I was asked by a student to take the とりょう For an instant I was startled but then quickly, I thought, we were talking about the paint we were using for 'reforming' our lab so I got it 塗料, but only because I could recall that the kanji for 塗る (to paint) has also the ON reading ト

Third, no matter how extensive is a vocabulary, people tend to use the same words, related to what they do. I wont understand people talking to me about finances not even in English or Spanish (my native language) as most of Japanese wont understand if I tell them I do でんきえいど everyday. (でんきえいど = 電気泳動 = electrophoresis) so dont be afraid of unknown words, just ask the meaning.

I have to agree, there are a brutal number of single words where English would use two or more words. 暗譜 = memorizing a musical score. I mean come on. Still, it's something I like about Japanese.

Yeah but it's not like you have to memorise these words. Kanji like 暗 and 新 can basically be thought of as unique words in their own right with fairly predictable usage.

mezbup Wrote:I have to agree, there are a brutal number of single words where English would use two or more words. 暗譜 = memorizing a musical score. I mean come on. Still, it's something I like about Japanese.

Then there are words like 左折, 右折 and 見上げる. All pretty common.

Personally, i like the succinctness.

Jarvik7 Wrote:新車 is no more a distinct word than "new car" is in English.

I beg to differ. That argument might fly if we were talking about Chinese, but not here.
Encountering the word from a written context, it's possible to guess at its pronunciation, but not be 100% sure. It must be learned in its own right.

And encountering the word in a verbal context, there are so many morphemes pronounced /shin/ and /sha/ that if you heard the word all by itself for the first time, you'd have a tough time guessing what it is. In fact, Koujien shows five different words pronounced /shinsha/.

Neither of those is true in the case of "new car" because it actually does comprise two separate words.

Besides, if 新車 isn't a distinct word, why does it have entries in Koujien and Daijisen? You're not going to find "new car" in any 英ー英 dictionary.

From memory the biggest Oxford dictionary is about 1.2 million words. The biggest Japanese is about 800,000. Realistically, English vocab is way, way, way big; Japanese just feels big.

In response to Jimmy:



Yeah, Japanese is super complicated and requires an advanced brain to comprehend it. My brain is gonna explode from all the homophones.

しん is used all the time meaning new, and しゃ is used all the time for car/vehicle. You may as well complain about English having car, vehicle, automobile etc, or terms like 'new model'. plastic model? clothing model? omg so confusing...

Any language you are studying feels like it has a big vocabulary.

(In addition to what's been mentioned about 新車, it's also different from English "new car" in that you have to learn or pick up by exposure how 新車 differs from 新しい車, and when to use each one.)

nadiatims Wrote:In response to Jimmy:



Yeah, Japanese is super complicated and requires an advanced brain to comprehend it. My brain is gonna explode from all the homophones.

Where do you get this? All I was arguing is that 新車 is a word in its own right. Why you decided to infer a whole bunch else from my post is your own personal deal.

vix86 Wrote:

Jarvik7 Wrote:

damicore Wrote:I know but right now it seems they could easily have a word for "old blue car that I crashed the other day" and it's kind of frustrating haha.

An agglutinative language will have a word for that.

You can get most of the way there with Japanese, but only 漢語 are somewhat agglutinative so it's difficult to portray who did the crashing.
我先日被事故古青車 (my old blue vehicle that was crashed the other day)

Isn't it somewhat common practice for Japanese newspapers to do this in order to save on space? As I do seem to recall there being a section in one of my "Japanese Grammar Dictionaries" talking about how some particles can be dropped in newspaper articles.

I wouldn't define "word" by "when a group of kanji ends". besides there's a large lack of okurigana there or are they all on'yomis? That'd be like trying to speak entirely in chinese through japanese phonemas i suppose haha

Can't tell about the amount of vocabulary in Japanese, but my mother was always saying she's glad I do know Russian since that has a shitload of words lol
But with Japanese my impression is also like there is a hell of a lot of words ~

damicore Wrote:

vix86 Wrote:

Jarvik7 Wrote:An agglutinative language will have a word for that.

You can get most of the way there with Japanese, but only 漢語 are somewhat agglutinative so it's difficult to portray who did the crashing.
我先日被事故古青車 (my old blue vehicle that was crashed the other day)

Isn't it somewhat common practice for Japanese newspapers to do this in order to save on space? As I do seem to recall there being a section in one of my "Japanese Grammar Dictionaries" talking about how some particles can be dropped in newspaper articles.

I wouldn't define "word" by "when a group of kanji ends". besides there's a large lack of okurigana there or are they all on'yomis? That'd be like trying to speak entirely in chinese through japanese phonemas i suppose haha

Not necessarily onyomi. 青空 is a kunyomi compound. Saying there's a lack of okurigana in it is like saying there's a lack in 新車, ie missing the point. It's not a sentence with particles dropped, it's a word (a once-off compound formed by regular rules, but a word none the less).

Concatenating large strings of kanji together into one super mega compound is extremely common in technical specifications. Words like 前回取得補正後電気角 are everywhere. Lest anyone think that Jarvik7's example is in any way extreme.

我先日被事故古青車 how would you write that in hiragana? multiple individual words would pop out instantly (我, 先日、彼、事故、古い、青い and 車); it isn't 熟語 nor is it 漢語, am I not right?
The same applies to the kanji string you posted, it isn't a compound, it's several compounds that modify each other through grammar.

My long example is no less of a compound than 新車. Would you argue that 被爆者 is not a valid compound because it includes the compound 被爆?

I would probably pronounce it わがせんじつひじここせいしゃ

@Jimmy
I would argue that 新車 is neither a distinct word nor not a distinct word, since to apply such a label would be to shoehorn the conceptualization of Japanese into the structure of a foreign language. It is somewhere between noun and noun-phrase.
For the same reason I do not like labels such as adj, noun, verb etc, as they don't really fit (many nouns are just verb stems? Wut?)