Does Polish or English have more words
Which language has more words Polish or English
Conventional wisdom will tell you the English language has the most words of any language in the world, as it is the most universal and the pax lingua of today. And when you compare it with a language like Polish with only fifty million native speakers, certainly English has a richer lexicon. As a proud native English speaker, this is what I went around repeating. English has the most words of any language. But then when I started to learn the Polish language. I was amazed at all the words Polish has, that English does not have. Especially connected with nature and animals. Science-medical-legal vocabulary is all the same as it comes from Latin. Technology words are universal. But English having more native speakers is slangier and has many new idioms appearing at a faster rate than Polish. But Polish has an edge when it comes to primary words. Further I think Polish has more verbs but English has more nouns. These are just my observations. I am curious what others think about this subject even with other language.
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September 7, 2007at 10:35 am
You’re right on the money! Here’s an example:
English Word - Polish Word
A Horsefly - giez
A Dragonfly - wazka
A Fly - mucha
A Butterfly - motyl
a Greenfly - mszyca
To fly - latac
As you found out for yourself, Polish comes up with an original word most of the time. If you say greenfly in Polish - “zielona mucha”, it really sounds funny :]
October 31, 2007at 2:34 pm
I agree that Polish has much richer lexicon than English. Let’s take for an example a list of deminutives and augmentatives that are all quite common in Polish but all of them would be translated into English with the same word:
‘nose’: nos, nosek, noseczek, nochal, nochalek, nosisko
‘dog’: pies, piesek, pieseczek, psisko, psina, psinka
‘meat’: miÄ™so, miÄ™sko, miÄ™cho
‘bottle’: butla, butelka, buteleczka