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

[Benjamin Barrett]

On Jul 9, 2008, at 10:34 AM, LanDi Liu wrote:

>
> On Thu, Jul 10, 2008 at 1:15 AM, Dennis Baron <debaron at illinois.edu>
> wrote:
>> If only literates could coin words, then how could language develop
>> before literacy? Oh wait, maybe it didn't.  Words are slippery things
>> to count; new words slipperier; words on their way out slipperiest?
>>
>> D
>
> I don't think only literates can coin words, but I think they'd be
> more likely to, especially in England in the 1590s.  Also, in that
> time, if illiterates coined words, they would be much less likely to
> be recorded.
>
> Randy

Surely that's a major factor in why it seems so many words were coined
at that time: The illiterates had been coining and using words for
centuries that never made it to print. As printing and literacy spread
and the middle class grew, those words made it into the written
record. (Not to discount the fact that science, education and other
changing factors were also adding to the stock of words.) BB

>
>>
>>
>> On Jul 9, 2008, at 9:45 AM, LanDi Liu wrote:
>>
>>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>> -----------------------
>>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>> Poster:       LanDi Liu <strangeguitars at GMAIL.COM>
>>> Subject:      Re: A million English words, or only 600,000? Either
>>> way, it's a
>>>             language packed with more words than you'll ever need
>>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>> 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 Alexander
>>> Jilin City, China
>>> My Manchu studies blog:
>>> http://www.bjshengr.com/manchu
>>>
>>> -

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