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From: petex@cix.compulink.co.uk ("Peter Christian")
Subject: Re: Amounts of words in English and French
Message-ID: <DG369w.Hv@cix.compulink.co.uk>
Organization: Compulink Information eXchange
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References: <450467$mnb@edf3.der.edf.fr>
Date: Sat, 7 Oct 1995 16:10:44 GMT
Lines: 33

> 
> Hello,
> 
> I am wondering about the respective amount of words 
> in English and  French languages.
> I was once told by an (apparently) serious linguist
> that the number of english words was 10 times 
> the number of french words.
> Another time, I read in an (apparently) serious book that
> the amount of english words was 8 times the amount of french words.
> 
> This gap appear enormous to me (and to some friends of mine I bet on the
> subject ...)
> 
> Could anyone give me the truth 
> with some explanations or references ?

The truth is yes - English has more words

The explanation is rather trivial:

English generally creates compounds by creating a single word from the 
components, whereas French tends to connect the elements with a preposition, 
e.g. "bathroom" vs "salle de bain" - so English rather obviously has more 
"words" than French. 

The more interesting issue is whether English has more "terms" than French. 
The answer here is much harder to establish. Clearly in specialised areas of 
vocab. one would expect them to be very similar, but I've no idea how one 
would establish this for the everyday vocab.

Peter

