A million English words, or only 600,000? Either way, it's a language packed with more words than you'll ever need

LanDi Liu strangeguitars at GMAIL.COM
Wed Jul 9 15:22:24 UTC 2008


>>On Wed, Jul 9, 2008 at 8:43 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
>> > And one could point out how much more linguistic the 1590s were by
>> > dividing the times per word by the number of English speakers in the
>> > two periods.
>> >
>> > Joel
>>
>>Especially if one only counted literate speakers.  One might assume
>>the unwashed masses weren't coining too many words.
>>
>>Randy
>
> Are you discounting the Anglo-Saxons?
>
> Joel

Yes.  Unless you think the Anglo-Saxons had a significant impact on
the English language in the 1590s.  ; )

--
Randy Alexander
Jilin City, China
My Manchu studies blog:
http://www.bjshengr.com/manchu

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