Robierre wrote:Today I read an interesting information (I don't know if it is true):
[...] l’anglais élargit constamment son vocabulaire: il croît de 5% par an, et viendrait de dépasser le million de mots. Or le français – déjà «de toutes les langues des peuples civilisés du monde (celle) possédant le plus petit nombre de mots», comme gémissaient les frères Goncourt – s’est doté d’une ceinture de chasteté légale et culturelle qui le contient bien en dessous des 100.000 termes.
I have heard similar things. It is apparently a result of the way the two official language dictionaries are compiled. English is always adding new words and never deleting old ones that are no longer used (the everyday English dictionary would only contain a limited number of these- the 'official complete' dictionary would have them all). French constantly deletes words that have become obsolete due to no longer being used for a certain period of time. In the end no-one has a vocabularly of one million words. Is French actually being more practical here?