The richest language in terms of number of words. Which language has the most words? Language records

October 24, 2013

Many people are interested in linguistics. They are reading interesting books L. Uspensky and are looking for an answer to the question, what is the richest language on our planet? You should try to answer their question.

For a long time, philologists have been struggling with the question: which language of the world is the most lexically rich? In what language could a person most accurately and elegantly express what is in his soul? It is difficult to answer this question right away, because everyone will consider it native language the richest. There are a lot of proverbs related to rain in English, but in German they can be expressed very accurately abstract concepts, the French language helps to accurately express even the most ornate epithets. Japanese traditionally divided into two parallel dialects - feminine and masculine, Norwegian - into Bokmål and modern Norwegian, and what can we say about the Russian language - it has thousands of dialects.

Unfortunately, the Guinness Book of Records chose Greek and not Russian as the leader in the number of words. Using a special program, it was possible to calculate that Greek there are more than 5 million words (for comparison, there are about 1.3 million words in English).

However, as one popular saying goes, “Russians don’t give up.” NCRY was created by linguists special program, which was able to most objectively count the number of words in our language. It turned out that the Russian language is eight times richer than the Greek language. More than 40 million words (40 megawords) were counted in the national corpus of the Russian language. But this is not the limit: in connection with the development of our language, scientists are already planning the creation of a dictionary of 200 megawords, which would include absolutely all words, both modern and ancient, and dialectal, and fictitious, and even obscene.

Sometimes, when discussing the Russian language as one of the richest, one remembers an anecdote about how representatives of four European nationalities, including Russian, met. And he proposed to his friends a bet that only in the Russian language can one compose a story from words starting with the same letter. And he succeeded: Pyotr Petrovich Petukhov, lieutenant of the Podolsk Fifty-fifth Infantry Regiment, received a letter by mail full of wishes, and pleasant ones at that. Petukhov liked Praskovya Petrovna Perepelkina’s invitation...” and so on.

However, many see Chinese as the richest language in the world. There was even a competition “The Richest Language”, which was held in 2003 in the USA, and where the winner was precisely Chinese. However, professional linguists believe that this is not so. The Chinese language is rather rich in grammatical basis, rather than lexical.

Many scientists consider the richest languages to be the little-known dialects of the Indians, as well as various African tribes. The Chippewa Indian language has more than 6,000 verb forms, and the Haida Indian language has more than 70 prefixes. The Eskimo language is also distinguished by its grammatical richness - it has more than 60 present tense forms! This is why Eskimo is difficult to learn to a European person, accustomed to a maximum of 16 forms of different tenses.

Another rich language is Tabasaran, which has more than forty-eight noun cases. If we judge the richness of a language by the number of letters in the alphabet, then the Khmer language is in the lead, with 73 letters in its alphabet. The Ubykh language has the most consonant sounds - 85; among the ready-made ones there are 8 variations of the sound “g”.

But to us Russians, of course, our native language will seem richer than others. The Russian language does not have a colossal number of letters, consonants and vowels, intricate grammatical forms. But there is an incredible lexical wealth that allows you to most accurately express every thought and put it in a beautiful form. This is precisely what helped many famous Russian classics create their works - inexhaustible vocabulary fund Russian language. And in order for this wealth to increase every year, one should treat the language with care, preserve old and little-used words, draw new ones from other languages and create neologisms.

Without linguistic expertise, it is difficult to answer the question of which language is the richest. In fact, for every native speaker, his native language is the most beautiful and rich, and this is completely natural.

At one of the symposia, four linguists met: an Englishman, a German, an Italian and a Russian. The conversation turned to languages. They began to argue, whose language is more beautiful, better, richer, and to which language does the future belong?

The Englishman said: “England is a country of great conquerors, sailors and travelers who spread the glory of its language to all corners of the world. The English language - the language of Shakespeare, Dickens, Byron - is undoubtedly best language in the world".

“Nothing like that,” said the German, “Our language is the language of science and physics, medicine and technology. The language of Kant and Hegel, the language in which it is written best work world poetry - “Faust” by Goethe.”

“You are both wrong,” the Italian entered into the argument, “Think, the whole world, all of humanity loves music, songs, romances, operas! What language are the best love romances and brilliant operas in? In the language of sunny Italy!

The Russian was silent for a long time, listened modestly and finally said: “Of course, I could also say, like each of you, that the Russian language - the language of Pushkin, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Chekhov - is superior to all the languages of the world. But I won't follow your path. Tell me, could you compose in your languages short story with a plot, with a consistent development of the plot, so that all the words in the story begin with the same letter?”

This greatly puzzled the interlocutors and all three said: “No, this is impossible in our languages.” Then the Russian replies: “But in our language this is quite possible, and I will now prove it to you. Name any letter." The German replied: “It doesn’t matter. The letter "P", for example."

“Great, here’s a story for you with this letter,” answered the Russian.

Pyotr Petrovich Petukhov, lieutenant of the fifty-fifth Podolsk infantry regiment, received a letter in the mail, complete nice wishes. “Come,” wrote the lovely Polina Pavlovna Perepelkina, “let’s talk, dream, dance, take a walk, visit a half-forgotten, half-overgrown pond, go fishing. Come, Pyotr Petrovich, to stay as soon as possible.”

Petukhov liked the proposal. I figured: I’ll come. I grabbed a half-worn field cloak and thought: this will come in handy.

The train arrived after noon. Pyotr Petrovich was received by Polina Pavlovna’s most respected father, Pavel Panteleimonovich. “Please, Pyotr Petrovich, sit down more comfortably,” said dad. A bald nephew came up and introduced himself: “Porfiry Platonovich Polikarpov. Please, please."

The lovely Polina appeared. A transparent Persian scarf covered her full shoulders. We talked, joked, and invited us to lunch. They served dumplings, pilaf, pickles, liver, pate, pies, cake, half a liter of orange juice. We had a hearty lunch. Pyotr Petrovich felt pleasantly satiated.

After eating, after a hearty snack, Polina Pavlovna invited Pyotr Petrovich to take a walk in the park. In front of the park stretched a half-forgotten, half-overgrown pond. We went sailing. After swimming in the pond we went for a walk in the park.

“Let’s sit down,” suggested Polina Pavlovna. Sit down. Polina Pavlovna moved closer. We sat and were silent. The first kiss sounded. Pyotr Petrovich got tired, offered to lie down, laid out his half-washed field cloak, and thought: this would come in handy. We lay down, rolled around, fell in love. “Pyotr Petrovich is a prankster, a scoundrel,” Polina Pavlovna said habitually.

“Let’s get married, let’s get married!” whispered the bald nephew. “Let’s get married, let’s get married,” the father approached in a deep voice. Pyotr Petrovich turned pale, staggered, then ran away. As I ran, I thought: “Polina Petrovna is a wonderful match, I’m really excited.”

The prospect of receiving a beautiful estate flashed before Pyotr Petrovich. I hastened to send an offer. Polina Pavlovna accepted the proposal and later got married. Friends came to congratulate us and brought gifts. Handing over the package, they said: “Wonderful couple.”

The interlocutors, linguists, having heard the story, were forced to admit that the Russian language is the best and richest language in the world.

Language is a sign system consisting of sounds, words and sentences. The sign system of each nation is unique due to its grammatical, morphological, phonetic and linguistic features. Simple languages does not exist, since each of them has its own difficulties, which are discovered during the study.

Below are the most complex languages of the world, the rating of which consists of 10 sign systems.

- This is one of the most difficult to pronounce. The sign system is also considered one of the most ancient languages. It contains linguistic units, used only by native speakers. One of the biggest challenges in learning Icelandic is its phonetics, which only native speakers can convey accurately.

Finnish language

Finnish language deservedly considered one of the most complex sign systems in the world. It has 15 cases, as well as several hundred personal verb forms and conjugations. In it, graphic signs fully convey sound form words (both written and pronounced), which simplifies the language. The grammar contains several past tense forms, but no future tense forms.

Navajo

Navajo- the language of the Indians, the peculiarity of which is considered verb forms, formed and changed by persons using prefixes. It is verbs that carry the main semantic information. The Navajos were used by the US military during World War II to transmit encrypted information.

In addition to vowels and consonants, the language contains 4 tones, which are called ascending - descending; high Low. IN currently The fate of the Navajo is in jeopardy as linguistic dictionaries are absent, and the younger generation of Indians is switching exclusively to English.

Among the top ten difficult languages for studying. It has 35 case forms and is replete with vowel sounds, which are quite difficult to pronounce due to their length. The sign system has quite complex grammar, in which there is an uncountable number of suffixes, as well as set expressions characteristic only of this language. A feature of the dictionary system is the presence of only 2 tense forms of the verb: present and past.

Eskimo

Eskimo and is considered one of the most complex in the world due to its numerous tense forms, of which there are up to 63 in the present tense alone. The case form of words has more than 200 inflections (word changes using endings, prefixes, suffixes). The Eskimo language is a language of images. For example, the meaning of the word “Internet” among the Eskimos would be “a journey through layers.” The Eskimo sign system is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as one of the most difficult.

One of the few languages listed in the Book due to its complexity. Its peculiarity lies in its numerous cases, of which there are 46. This is one of state languages residents of Dagestan, which has no prepositions. Postpositions are used instead. There are three types of dialects in the language, and each of them unites certain group dialects IN sign system a lot of borrowings from different languages: Persian, Azerbaijani, Arabic, Russian and others.

One of the oldest in Europe. It is owned by some residents of Southern France and Northern Spain. Basque contains 24 case forms, and does not belong to any branch language families. Dictionaries contain about half a million words, including dialects. Prefixes and suffixes are used to form new linguistic units.

The connection between words in a sentence is traced through changes in endings. Verb tense is indicated by changing the endings and beginnings of the word. Due to the not widespread use of the language, it was used by the American military during World War II to convey classified information. Basque is rightfully considered one of the most difficult languages to learn.

Russian

Russian one of the three most difficult languages in the world. The main difficulty with “great and mighty” is the free stress. For example, in French The stress is always placed on the last syllable of the word. In Russian strong position can be located anywhere: both in the first and in last syllable, or in the middle of a word. The meaning of many lexical units is determined by the place of stress, for example: flour - flour; organ – Organ. Also meaning polysemantic words, which are written and pronounced the same, are determined only in the context of the sentence.

Other linguistic units may differ in writing, but are pronounced the same and have a completely different meaning, for example: meadow - onion, etc. Our language is one of the richest in synonyms: one word can have up to a dozen similar meanings linguistic units. Punctuation also carries a large semantic load: the absence of one comma completely changes the meaning of the phrase. Remember the hackneyed phrase from school: “Execution cannot be pardoned”?

Arabic

Arabic– one of the most complex sign systems in the whole world. One letter has up to 4 different spellings: It all depends on the location of the symbol in the word. Not found in the Arabic vocabulary system lower case, word breaks for hyphenation are prohibited, and vowel symbols are not displayed on the letter. One of individual characteristics language lies in the way words are written - from right to left.

In Arabic, instead of the two numbers familiar to the Russian language, there are three numbers: singular, plural and dual. It is impossible to find identically pronounced words here, since each sound has 4 different tones, which will depend on its location.

Chinese

Chinese- incredible Difficult language. The first difficulty, if you want to study it, is the total number of hieroglyphs in the language. The modern Chinese dictionary contains about 87 thousand characters. The complexity lies not only in the sign system of the language, but also in correct spelling. A single incorrectly depicted line in one hieroglyph completely distorts the meaning of the word.

One Chinese "letter" can mean an entire word or even a sentence. Graphic symbol does not reflect the phonetic essence of the word - a person who does not know all the intricacies of this language will not be able to understand how to correctly pronounce the written word. Phonetics is quite complex: it has numerous homophones and contains 4 tones in the system. Learning Chinese is one of the most complex tasks, which a foreigner can set before himself.

The Englishman said: “England is a country of great conquerors, sailors and travelers who spread the glory of its language to all corners of the world.

The English language – the language of Shakespeare, Dickens, Byron – is undoubtedly the best language in the world.”

“Nothing like that,” said the German, “Our language is the language of science and physics, medicine and technology. The language of Kant and Hegel, the language in which the best work of world poetry is written – Goethe’s Faust.”

The Russian was silent for a long time, listened modestly and finally said: “Of course, I could also say, like each of you, that the Russian language - the language of Pushkin, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Chekhov - is superior to all the languages of the world. But I won't follow your path. Tell me, could you compose a short story in your languages with a plot, with a consistent development of the plot, so that all the words in the story begin with the same letter?”

“Great, here’s a story for you with this letter,” answered the Russian.

Pyotr Petrovich Petukhov, lieutenant of the fifty-fifth Podolsk Infantry Regiment, received a letter by mail full of pleasant wishes. “Come,” wrote the lovely Polina Pavlovna Perepelkina, “let’s talk, dream, dance, take a walk, visit a half-forgotten, half-overgrown pond, go fishing. Come, Pyotr Petrovich, to stay as soon as possible.”

Petukhov liked the proposal. I figured: I’ll come. I grabbed a half-worn field cloak and thought: this will come in handy.

The interlocutors, linguists, having heard the story, were forced to admit that the Russian language is the best and richest language in the world.

The Englishman said: “England is a country of great conquerors, sailors and travelers who spread the glory of its language to all corners of the world. The English language – the language of Shakespeare, Dickens, Byron – is undoubtedly the best language in the world.”

The Russian was silent for a long time, listened modestly and finally said: “Of course, I could also say, like each of you, that the Russian language - the language of Pushkin, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Chekhov - is superior to all the languages of the world. But I won't follow your path. Tell me, could you compose a short story in your languages with a plot, with a consistent development of the plot, so that all the words in the story begin with the same letter?”

“Great, here’s a story for you with this letter,” answered the Russian.

Petukhov liked the proposal. I figured: I’ll come. I grabbed a half-worn field cloak and thought: this will come in handy.

The interlocutors, linguists, having heard the story, were forced to admit that the Russian language is the best and richest language in the world.