You Can’t Say That In English!

Hi Gérard
Thanks for "hacer la sobremesa". Il means to have an after-dinner chat. I didn't know about it !

Hi Muriel,

I liked this article.
I could find a confirmation English had more words than any other language in the world. This is a clue En has got words where other languages have expressions, En is denser than other languages...
A language shows the point of view of the people, the way people sees world and life. Languages have more words in the domain of their specialties eg war, army, cooking, fashion, fragrance, beauty and luxury, etc for French.

English had more words than any other language in the world

I knew that but why ? Is there something to do with their culture, their pragmatism ? I don't know....

My personal theory:
- many people invaded the British islands and the language received many foreign influences
- English language and English people are very respectful: they keep teh words brought by invaders; this leads to oodles of similar words bt as I like to state, there are no true synonyms
- at the same time, the consequence of various different pronunciations led to many suttle sounds and to the compactness of the language.

Gérard you have studied language history and you must be right. I don't know much about it. Thanks for all these explanations.

> you have studied language history
Really?


I'm open to any explanations.

Gérard what about your blog. I know that one of your hobbies is European language history. Am I wrong ?
http://volangues.blogspot.fr/2011/01/histoire-des-langues-europeennes-2.html

Good memory Muriel!  

Hi Muriel, hi everyone,

English has got more words than any other language; we could think they can use lots of synonyms and avoid repetition.
However, they don't hesitate to repeat the same word several times in a sentence where the French absolutely ban this.