The American moment is waning. Will English pull us through?

[Tom Zurinskas]

The Oxford English Dictionary records some 600,000 English words.
http://www.illinois.edu/goto/weboflanguage

Wordnik claims 1.7 million words (perhaps they're not all English)
http://www.wordnik.com/

One sticky point is the definition of a word.  Is the word "set" different from the word "set".  SOme would say so depending on meaning.  There may be 20 meanings to the word "set".  So that would be 20 words.  I think this is not what we mean by the word "word".

Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL5+
see truespel.com













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> Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2009 18:26:31 -0500
> From: debaron at ILLINOIS.EDU
> Subject: The American moment is waning. Will English pull us through?
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Dennis Baron
> Subject: The American moment is waning. Will English pull us through?
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> There's a new post on the Web of Language:
>
> The American moment is waning. Will English pull us through?
>
> The American economy is shrinking. The trade deficit is growing. U.S. =20=
>
> military intervention is ineffective. Immigration is out of control. =20
> Not to worry, though, English will pull us through.
>
> At least that=92s what Ali Wynne, a junior fellow at the Carnegie =20
> Endowment for International Peace, argues on the website of Foreign =20
> Policy. Wyne reassures anyone worried that the American moment is =20
> waning, =93the growing influence of English will ensure that the United =20=
>
> States doesn=92t fade into the sunset anytime soon.=94
>
> According to Wyne, English has just added its millionth word, giving =20
> it a vocabulary twice as large as any other language. Also: there are =20=
>
> more nonnative than native speakers of the language; everything =20
> important in journalism and in science is published in English; there =20=
>
> are 650 million speakers of English in China and India alone; it=92s the =
> =20
> foreign language of choice around the world, even in France; and the =20
> number of languages in the world will decline precipitously from =20
> today=92s count of 7,000, give or take, to a couple of hundred by 2100.
>
> Wyne then points to the once-global languages Latin and French to =20
> conclude, =93great powers and global lingua francas tend to go =
> together.=94
>
> Find out why everything Wyne says is wrong. Read the post on the Web =20
> of Language: http://www.illinois.edu/goto/weboflanguage
>
> ____________________
> Dennis Baron
> Professor of English and Linguistics
> Department of English
> University of Illinois
> 608 S. Wright St.
> Urbana, IL 61801
>
> office: 217-244-0568
> fax: 217-333-4321
>
> http://www.illinois.edu/goto/debaron
>
> read the Web of Language:
> http://www.illinois.edu/goto/weboflanguage
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
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