how many words in Hungarian and other languages?
harg...@acf5.nyu.edu
I've been wondering, how many words does the Hungarian language have?
60.000?
Others?
jh
att...@breeze.bellcore.com
DEFINING Dictionaries: My Marriam-Webster 3rd World International
Dictionary lists about 425,000 entries. The OED, Oxford English
Dictionary Arranged on Historical Principles, has about three quarter
million entries, if my memory serves me correctly.
TRANSLATION Dictionaries: The new edition of the Magyar-Angol Keziszotar
[ed. Orszagh Laszlo] has close to 100,000 enteries. The old Keziszotar
had 65,000 headings. The Keziszotar [Compact Dictionary] is an
abridgement of the multi-volume set, so I presume the multi volume set
is larger by a factor of several times.
Now, what is the real answer? Turns out that this is a nontrivial
problem because the question of "how many words" a language has depends
on what and how you count.
In Chinese, every word is a *single* syllable. There are no
polysyllabic words. There is no mood; there is no future tense; there
is no past tense; there are no modifiers and so on. The number of
"words" is large --but not as large as you would think-- and their
meaning is context sensitive. This means that a large number of words
are needed to express what are single word equivalents in English.
[Eg. hamburger is four words in Chinese.]
English of course allows polysyllabic words. It also has tenses and
cases. The number of words is large, but due to the fixed word order
subtle shadings of meaning are expressed by the use of synonyms. Hence
more word are needed then in a languge with flexble word order.
German has a slightly more powerful grammar than English. Furthermore
it allows noun concatenation. So the English phrase "captain of the
Danube and Ocean going vessel" is *one* word in German. So, if one
wanted to compare vocabulary sizes across languages, would you count
this as one word, or as nine words, or count as ten?
Hungarian is an agglutinative language. Agglutination provides a
facility far more powerful than noun concatenation. It permits
formation of new words from nouns and verbs and adjectives and modifiers
and other suffix components. To demonstrate: the word "a'tirattattam"
[accent mark indicated with a ' on the a] translates into English as "I
had someone revise a written work for me". Now, how many words would
that constitute in a counting system? Since the root is "ir" meaning to
write, most Hungarians would consider this just *one* word on the
grounds that the new meaning is just conjugation that can be applied to
any ordinary verb.
Consider another Hungarian example. The example is the first 2
sentences from yesterday's HIRMONDO.
A kormany csutortoki ulesen tobbek kozott a
buntetojogszabalyok modositasat targyalja. A testulet
foglalkozik a gepjarmuado ujraszabalyozasaval is.
The two sentences are only 17 words long. One might want to translate
this into say Chinese, English, German, etc. to see how many words it
would be? To give a head start the word "buntetojogszabalyok" means
"punitive legal codes" in English. Or if one wants to have more fun,
analyse the etymology and roots in "gepjarmuado".
To sum up: I don't know what the "correct" answer is to the number of
words in Hungarian and other language because I don't know of a valid
counting algorithm for dissimilar languages. Hopefully some
lexicographer can give us some advice.
Leslie A. Walko, att...@bellcore.com
Scott Horne
<
<Now, what is the real answer? Turns out that this is a nontrivial
<problem because the question of "how many words" a language has depends
<on what and how you count.
Yes. It's a very uninteresting question.
<In Chinese, every word is a *single* syllable. There are no
<polysyllabic words.
Simply wrong. (I speak Chinese, and my specialty is Chinese linguistics,
so don't flame unless you have your facts straight. :-) ) Most words in
Chinese have at least two syllables. Very few words have only one.
<There is no mood;
Wrong.
<there is no future tense;
Maybe, depending on what you mean by "future tense".
<there
<is no past tense;
See above.
<there are no modifiers and so on.
Wrong.
<[Eg. hamburger is four words in Chinese.]
Not true. It's a single word which happens to have three syllables (two in
Taiwan).
<German has a slightly more powerful grammar than English.
I have no idea what you mean by this, and you probably don't, either.
--Scott
--
Scott Horne ...!{harvard,cmcl2,decvax}!yale!horne
ho...@cs.Yale.edu SnailMail: Box 7196 Yale Station, New Haven, CT 06520
203 436-1848 Residence: Rm 1848 Silliman College, New Haven, CT
`Democracy' and `dictatorship' both start with a `d'.
William Vajk
>I've been wondering, how many words does the Hungarian language have?
>60.000?
Which Hungarian ? What words do you wish included. Official "hungarianized"
words of recent origin, like "parkolni" which means 'to park' ??? Officially
"invented" Hungarianish words such as for mercury (I won't even try to spell
it, though I can say it.....designed to fit the international designation of
the latinized abbreviation Hg.)
In practical everyday use, so far as I can determine, are massive hunks of
German and American English well mixed in. During my visits I found it
interesting that English and German words were used rather offhandedly, while
words from other western languages (Italian, French, and Spanish mostly)
invariably were noted as being of foreign origin as part of the conversation.
Others may have a different experience, but I didn't find any Russian or
slavic words of any sort in new common usage (new = added since WW2.) This
in spite of the fact that for many years, Russian was a required language
in the national curriculum.
Bill Vajk
att...@breeze.bellcore.com
> In article <1991Oct4.1...@walter.bellcore.com>, <att...@breeze.bellcore.com> writes:
> <
Subject: [att...@breeze.bellcore.com: how many words in hungarian and other languages?]
Cc: att...@breeze.bellcore.com
Status: RO
Scott,
Leslie asked me to reply your mail.
I am a Chinese and was educated in Taiwan for 24 years before
I came here for a Ph.D. degree.
I normally do not waste time to read usenet junks.
From my judgement, your statements are false.
My name: "Tseng Ping Sheng" are 3 Chinese words and each
of them has single syllable.
Hamburger in Chinese is either "Ham Bo" (two words) or
"Nu Zo Bin" (3 words).
Chinese verbs do not have tense.
Of course, you can have your own American definition
of a "Chinese word". All the Chinese dictionary has
my definition of what is a "Chinese word".
Ping Sheng Tseng
Date: Tue, 8 Oct 1991 17:26-0400
From: Leslie A. Walko <att...@breeze.bellcore.com>
Subject: how many words in hungarian and other languages?
To: pst...@bellcore.com
Ping,
Could you reply to this one?
Thanks,
Leslie
--------------------
>From: horne...@cs.yale.edu (Scott Horne)
>Newsgroups: soc.culture.magyar
>Message-ID: <1991Oct4.1...@cs.yale.edu>
In article <1991Oct4.1...@walter.bellcore.com>, <att...@breeze.bellcore.com> writes:
<
<Now, what is the real answer? Turns out that this is a nontrivial
<problem because the question of "how many words" a language has depends
<on what and how you count.
> Yes. It's a very uninteresting question.
<In Chinese, every word is a *single* syllable. There are no
<polysyllabic words.
> Simply wrong. (I speak Chinese, and my specialty is Chinese linguistics,
> so don't flame unless you have your facts straight. :-) ) Most words in
> Chinese have at least two syllables. Very few words have only one.
<There is no mood;
Wrong.
<there is no future tense;
Maybe, depending on what you mean by "future tense".
<there
<is no past tense;
See above.
<there are no modifiers and so on.
Wrong.
<[Eg. hamburger is four words in Chinese.]
Not true. It's a single word which happens to have three syllables (two in
Taiwan).
<German has a slightly more powerful grammar than English.
I have no idea what you mean by this, and you probably don't, either.
Scott Horne
<In article <1991Oct4.1...@cs.yale.edu> horne...@cs.yale.edu (Scott Horne) writes:
<> In article <1991Oct4.1...@walter.bellcore.com>, <att...@breeze.bellcore.com> writes:
<
<Subject: [att...@breeze.bellcore.com: how many words in hungarian and other languages?]
<Cc: att...@breeze.bellcore.com
<Status: RO
<
I'm sorry, but you're wrong.
< My name: "Tseng Ping Sheng" are 3 Chinese words and each
< of them has single syllable.
I don't see what this has to do with the discussion.
< Hamburger in Chinese is either "Ham Bo" (two words) or
< "Nu Zo Bin" (3 words).
In Taiwan, `han4bao3' (I'm using pinyin romanisation here) is used. In the
PRC, `han4bao3baor1' is used. The former has two syllables, the latter three.
< Chinese verbs do not have tense.
That depends on what you mean by `tense'. Chinese verbs can certainly
express tense even though there are no explicit tense markers in Mandarin.
--Scott
--
Scott Horne ...!{harvard,cmcl2,decvax}!yale!horne
ho...@cs.Yale.edu SnailMail: Box 7196 Yale Station, New Haven, CT 06520
203 436-1848 Residence: Rm 1848 Silliman College, New Haven, CT
Rule Britannia--or Britannia will rule you.
seth...@gmail.com
m...@privacy.net
> How nany spoken words
Depending on criteria 60.000-100.000, 110.000, 1.000.000, 7.200.000
https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sz%C3%B3kincsm%C3%A9retek_%C3%B6sszehasonl%
C3%ADt%C3%B3_list%C3%A1ja
The passiv vocabulary of a highly educated person amounts in 50-60.000
words.
