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Author: admin

speaker genius
Why English has so many words?

I am a Chinese. I have been learning English for years, and I memorise heaps of vocabularies, including ToFel, GRE etc. But still, I keep seeing new words in newspaper, telly, textbook, I just don't understand why after all that hard work and effort in learning vocab, I still keep finding new words in everyday life. Are western people genius or something, they just can memorise every single word's meaning?

I find lots of words are redundant, not necessarily created, since there are always 10 other words that can replace the same meaning. Why English has to make itself so complicated? How do native speaker master the language? I really curious.

The English language has a large vocabulary of words because it is an incredibly adaptive language. It consists of words adopted from multiple other languages, as well as those coming from the roots of Saxon English. While I can understand the frustration of somebody learning the language, you must also understand that no native English speaker has a vocabulary consisting of every single word in the English language. Most of us have a good working vocabulary of about 10,000 words, supplemented by speciality words which reflect our areas of expertise or interest. The English language consists of about 600,000 words, give or take a few thousand. No one expects you to know every single word in the language, only enough to be able to express yourself intelligibly. That's why we have dictionaries, and when we wish to find other similar words, we use a thesaurus. The words are not redundant at all. What you are encountering are words that have similar meanings, but differ in nuance. They are not the same word at all, any more than all grains of rice are identical. While they may look much the same, they are each slightly different. The observant person will note that.
Words are key to imagination and intelligence, giving us the ability to attempt to convey a thought from our head to that of another person. When you limit a languages' abilty to allow the speaker to express a thought or idea, you stifle innovation, imagination and growth.
Just as English expands with the addition of new words, old words fade away from use as well. They are still considered part of the language, but become archaic reminders of time past. Although you will still find the word "thou" in a dictionary, I don't believe I have heard anyone outside a church use it. We also alter the meaning of words over time. When my grandmother used the word gay, she had an entirely different meaning from how it is commonly used today.
We native speakers master language over a period of years. We typically begin school with a working vocabulary of a thousand words or so, and gradually add to that vocabulary over the next 12 years or so of school. We acquire additional words throughout our lives, as needed. Keep in mind that there is also a discrepancy between the number of words we use for daily speech and the number of words we know, or use to write with. I happen to be a nurse, with a large knowledge of medical terms I use primarily in writing and reading only. I seldom speak them, and then only with others of similar background. My husband works with computers, and routinely uses terms I am not familiar with. There is also a variation in every language, known as child speak. These are words typically used by young children, recognizable most easily by native speakers or parents, and which fade from use as the child grows up. I'm sure these exist in Chinese as well, as when a child says " a bow-wow" instead of "dog". As a non-native speaker, you would find understanding this a challenge, but it would not reflect on your command of the language overall.
As long as you have enough vocabulary to be able to express the majority of your thoughts and needs, and are able to make yourself understood, then you should have sufficient vocabulary to be sucessful. I don't think you should ever reach a point, with any language- native or not, when you can say you have learned all the possible vocabulary and can now stop learning. Regardless of what language you speak, refusing to learn new words will limit your ability to change, adapt, and progress as a human being. It doesn't matter how profound your thoughts are, what wonderful knowledge you possess or what lessons you have to share, if you can't express them in an understandable manner, you may as well not have them at all.