How words help you take over the world

I remember reading an article a few years back that said there are about one million words in the English language. This was compared with some other major languages that had between one quarter to one half a million words in them. The article then presented the idea that this vast array of words available to the English language is what has helped it become one of the top spoken languages in the world. The basic theory presented was that the more words available to users, then the greater level of description available. This then led people to gravitate to English because of its greater level of nuance.

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The chapter on Descriptions in “Patterns for a Purpose” may have less lofty goals than Geolinguistics world dominance. None the less it is what makes the difference in the way people communicate. Description is what gives language its substance. In English a sentence is all noun → verb. With a few prepositions and conjunctions hanging around to make life a little easier. You have no real need for any other part of speech. Things like adverbs, interjections or adjectives are not needed to convey an idea. We could get a long just fine with out them, but then life would get quite boring. One person could never run “faster” than another. Every one would just run.

To just run is not human. We are not creatures of absolutes, we feel. This is one of the qualities that many people think separates humans from other life forms. I for one do not believe that humans could live with out expressing them selfs in a highly descriptive way. If you don't believe this, next time your at a friends house, that has one of those fridge magnet word sets. Don't make a nice sentence with it. Take all the words and categorize them in to there parts of speech and see how many come up as a descriptive word.

Ultimately I think that we can all agree that a little thing called the British Empire. May have played a greater role in the spread of English, then all the forms of fast. Still it is an interesting thought, what if the utility of a language based on the level of detail available to its speakers plays a role in how that language is spread. I am not sure it is true or even if it is, how much of a factor it would be. But if there is any truth to this idea, than this chapters on descriptions. Is not just a good lesson but one with global affects.

Austin

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