Which language has the most words? Russian is the richest language in the world

The richness of the Russian language is expressed primarily in the vocabulary or, as philologists say, in the richness of vocabulary. How many words are in our language? Fifty thousands? One hundred thousand? Or maybe several hundred thousand? There are more than one hundred thousand words in a large academic dictionary. But these are far from all the words of the Russian language. His vocabulary is surprisingly ambiguous. It includes synonyms, antonyms, homonyms, words in figurative meaning, epithets and many, many other linguistic semantic means. How many words are borrowed from other languages? So, from the languages of the peoples of the Caucasus, the words “saklya”, “saber”, “narzan” entered the Russian language, from the Japanese language - “kimono”, “ju-do” and many others. Borrowings enrich the Russian language, make it more figurative, expressive and diverse. Russian is one of the most widely spoken languages the globe. Our Russian words have entered many languages of the world: “soviet”, “satellite”, “subbotnik”, “lunokhod”... and in many states ignorance of the Russian language is considered a sign of illiteracy and lack of culture. "Studying the Russian language is a great blessing for all Caucasians, as it makes it possible to join the rich Russian literature and feel at home in the vast expanses of their fatherland, which occupies a sixth of the entire earth." These words belong to the Georgian teacher of the 19th century. Jacob Gogebashvili. The great Kazakh educator Abai Kunanbaev wrote: “Remember that the main thing is to learn Russian science... In order to avoid vices and achieve good, you need to know the Russian language and Russian culture.” Many other foreign writers, poets and thinkers spoke about the importance of the Russian language in the life of every person. F. Engels wrote that the Russian language "deserves to be studied in and of itself, as one of the strongest and richest living languages." For centuries, people have been creating this flexible, expressive, melodious and beautiful language. The Russian language is the history of our people. In every word, one can also hear the peculiarity of Russian nature - the murmur of a brook, the rustle of leaves, the breath of the wind, the singing of the nightingale, and the peculiarity of the national character - each word is colored with its own unique emotional coloring and conveys various moods: joy or irritation, friendliness or hostility, delight or disappointment. Such a huge variety of shades can be expressed only in Russian. “In it is the whole singing Russian soul, the echo of the world and human groans, and the mirror of divine visions” (I. A. Ilyin, Russian 3rd philosopher of the 20th century). Without knowledge of the native language, without the ability to speak correctly and use a rich vocabulary, one cannot be a cultured person, one cannot be a patriot. After all true love to Russia is impossible without love for the native language, without pride in the immeasurable richness of its shades and sounds. “A person who is indifferent to his language is a savage. His indifference is explained by complete indifference to the past, present and future of his people” (K. Paustovsky). Perhaps the most interesting thing in our language is that each specific style of presentation corresponds to a certain selection of language forms. If you are using book style, then the use of colloquial expressions will look ridiculous, and vice versa. And there is no such abundance of lexical, morphological, phonetic, grammatical and syntactic forms in any other language of the world. The Russian language is beautiful, rich, ambiguous and capable of modification. This statement is accepted without objection. But is it possible to consider that its potential is inexhaustible? Unfortunately, the state of the modern Russian language causes more and more concern every day. The decrease in the level of speech culture is obvious. The decline in morality, moral principles in society, the loss of national features - all this affects our native language. Increasingly, jargon, slang, foreign words are used in modern vocabulary. Where is our national pride? Is our native language worse than others? “Our language is expressive not only for lofty eloquence. For loud pictorial poetry, but also for gentle simplicity, for the sounds of the heart and sensitivity. (N. M. Karamzin) Preservation of the language, concern for its dissemination and enrichment is a guarantee of the preservation of the national culture. Love the Russian language and protect it from distortion, remember that this mighty language was given to a great people.

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: what language of the world is the most lexically rich? In what language would a person be able to most accurately and gracefully express what is in his soul? It is difficult to answer this question right away, because everyone will consider his native language to be the richest. In English, there are a lot of proverbs related to rain, in German you can express abstract concepts very accurately, French 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 to say about the Russian language - it has thousands of dialects.

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

However, as one of the popular sayings says, "Russians do not give up." Linguists of the NKRY created a special program that was able to most objectively calculate the number of words in our language. It turned out that the Russian language is eight times richer than Greek. 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 to create a dictionary of 200 megawords, which would include absolutely all words, both modern and ancient, and dialect, and invented, and even obscene.

Sometimes, when discussing the Russian language as one of the richest, one recalls an anecdote about how representatives of four European nationalities met, including Russian. And he offered his friends a bet that only in Russian can a story be made up of words starting with the same letter. And after all, he succeeded: Petukhov Petr Petrovich, lieutenant of the Podolsky Fifty-fifth Infantry Regiment, received a letter by mail full of wishes, and pleasant ones at that. Petukhov liked the invitation of Perepelkina Praskovya Petrovna ... "and so on.

However, many see Chinese as the richest language in the world. There was even a contest "The Richest Language", which was held in 2003 in the United States, and where the winner was the Chinese language. However, professional linguists believe that this is not the case. The Chinese language is distinguished by a rich grammatical basis rather than a lexical one.

Many scientists consider the dialects of the Indians, as well as various African tribes, little known to us, to be the richest languages. Adverb North American Indians Chippewa has over 6,000 verb forms, and the Haida language has over 70 prefixes. The Eskimo language is also distinguished by its grammatical richness - there are more than 60 forms of the present tense in it! That is why the Eskimo language is difficult to learn for a European person who is used to a maximum of 16 forms of different times.

Another rich language is Tabasaran, which has more than forty-eight cases of nouns. If we judge the richness of the language by the number of letters in the alphabet, then the Khmer language is in the lead, in the alphabet of which there are 73 letters. The most consonant sounds in the Ubyh language are 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 each thought, to clothe it in nice shape. This is what helped many famous Russian classics to create their works - an inexhaustible vocabulary of the Russian language. And in order to increase this wealth every year, one should take care of the language, preserve old and little-used words, draw new ones from other languages and create neologisms.

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

Four linguists met at one of the symposiums: an Englishman, a German, an Italian and a Russian. There was talk of languages. They began to argue, and whose language is more beautiful, better, richer, and what language does the future belong to?

The Englishman said: "England is a country of great conquerors, seafarers and travelers who spread the glory of her language to all corners of the whole world. English language- the language of Shakespeare, Dickens, Byron - no doubt 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 best work world poetry - Goethe's Faust.

“You are both Wrong,” the Italian entered into an argument, “think, the whole world, all of humanity loves music, songs, romances, operas! In what language do the best love romances and brilliant operas sound? In the language of sunny Italy!”

The Russian was silent for a long time, listened modestly, and finally said: “Of course, I could also, like each of you, say that the Russian language - the language of Pushkin, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Chekhov - surpasses all the languages of the world. But I will not go according to your way. Tell me, could you write a short story in your languages with a plot, with a consistent development of the plot, so that all the words of the story begin with the same letter? This puzzled the interlocutors very much and all three said: "No, in Our Tongues it is impossible." Then the Russian answers: "but in our language it is quite possible, and I will prove it to you now. Name any letter." The German replied: "It doesn't matter. The letter "P" for example.

"Very well, here is the Story for this Letter," replied the Russian.

Pyotr Petrovich Petrov, Lieutenant of the 55th Podolsk Infantry Regiment, received a letter in the mail full of good wishes. "Come," wrote the charming Polina Pavlovna Perepyolkina, "we'll talk, dream, dance, take a walk, we'll visit a half-forgotten, half-overgrown pond, go fishing. Come, Pyotr Petrovich, visit as soon as possible."

Petukhov liked the offer. Figured: I'll come. I grabbed a half-worn field cloak, I thought: it will come in handy.

The train arrived in the afternoon. Pyotr Petrovich was received by Polina Pavlovna's most venerable 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. Full shoulders were covered with a transparent Persian scarf. We talked, joked, invited to dine. They served dumplings, pilaf, pickles, liver, pate, pies, cake, half a liter of orange juice. We had a hearty meal. Pyotr Petrovich felt a pleasant satiety.

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-grown pond. Ride under sail. 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 down, were silent. There was a first kiss. Pyotr Petrovich got tired, offered to lie down, spread out a half-worn field cloak, thought: it came in handy. Lie down, lie down, fall 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 dad who came up boomed. Pyotr Petrovich turned pale, staggered, then ran away. Having run, I thought: "Polina Petrovna - A wonderful Party, Fullness to take a steam bath."

The prospect of obtaining a beautiful estate flashed before Pyotr Petrovich. Hastened to send an offer. Polina Pavlovna accepted the offer, and later they got married. Friends came to congratulate, brought gifts. Passing the package, they said: "Beautiful Couple."

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 that are revealed in the course of the study.

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

- This is one of the most difficult in terms of pronunciation. Also, the sign system is 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 accurately convey.

Finnish language

Finnish language deservedly ranked among 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 the sound form of the word (both spelled and pronounced), which simplifies the language. The grammar contains several past forms, but no future tenses.

Navajo

Navajo- the language of the Indians, a feature of which is considered to be verb forms that are formed and changed by faces with the help of prefixes. It is the verbs that carry the main semantic information. Navajos were used by the US military during World War II to transmit encrypted information.

In addition to vowels and consonants, there are 4 tones in the language, which are referred to as ascending - descending; high Low. AT this moment the fate of the Navajo is in jeopardy, as linguistic dictionaries absent, and the younger generation of Indians is switching exclusively to English.

One of the ten most difficult languages to learn. It has 35 case forms and is replete with vowel sounds that are quite difficult to pronounce due to longitude. The sign system has a rather complex grammar, in which there are an uncountable number of suffixes, as well as set expressions that are characteristic only for 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 the numerous temporary forms, of which there are up to 63 only in the present tense. The case form of words has more than 200 inflections (word changes with the help of endings, prefixes, suffixes). Eskimo is a language of images. For example, the meaning of the word "Internet" among the Eskimos will sound like "travel through the 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 because of its complexity. Its peculiarity lies in numerous cases, of which there are 46. This is one of state languages residents of Dagestan, in which there are no prepositions. Postpositions are used instead. There are three types of dialects in the language, and each of them combines a certain group of dialects. The sign system has many 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 of language families. Dictionaries contain about half a million words, including dialects. Prefixes and suffixes are used to form new linguistic units.

The connection of words in a sentence can be traced through changes in endings. The tense of the verb is displayed by changing the endings and the beginning of the word. Due to the low prevalence of the language, it was used during the Second World War by the US military to transmit classified information. Basque is considered to be one of the most difficult languages to learn.

Russian

Russian one of the three most difficult languages in the world. The main difficulty of the "great and mighty" is free stress. For example, in French The stress is always placed on the last syllable of the word. In Russian, a strong position can be anywhere: both in the first and 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, the meaning of polysemantic words that are spelled and pronounced the same is 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 close in meaning language units. Punctuation also carries a great semantic load: the absence of one comma completely changes the meaning of the phrase. Remember the hackneyed phrase from the school bench: “You can’t pardon the execution”?

Arabic language

Arabic language- one of the most complex sign systems in the world. One letter has up to 4 different spellings: it all depends on the location of the character in the word. There are no lowercase letters in the Arabic dictionary system, word breaks for hyphenation are prohibited, and vowel characters are not displayed in writing. One of individual features language lies in the way words are written - from right to left.

In Arabic, instead of two numbers, which are familiar to the Russian language, there are three numbers: singular, plural and dual. It is impossible to find equally 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 has about 87 thousand characters. The difficulty lies not only in the sign system of the language, but also in the correct spelling. The only incorrectly depicted feature in one hieroglyph completely distorts the meaning of the word.

One Chinese "letter" can mean a whole word or even a sentence. The 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 the written word is pronounced correctly. Phonetics is quite complex: it has numerous homophones and contains 4 tones in the system. Learning Chinese is one of the most difficult task, which can be put in front of a foreigner.

Four linguists met at one of the symposiums: an Englishman, a German, an Italian and a Russian. We were talking about languages. They began to argue, and whose language is more beautiful, better, richer, and what language does the future belong to?

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

“Nothing of the kind,” 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.

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

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

"Fine, here's a story for you with this letter," replied the Russian.

Pyotr Petrovich Petukhov, Lieutenant of the 55th Podolsky Infantry Regiment, received a letter in the mail full of good wishes. “Come,” wrote the charming Polina Pavlovna Perepelkina, “we’ll 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 offer. Figured: I'll come. I grabbed a half-worn field cloak, I thought: it will come in handy.

The train arrived in the afternoon. Pyotr Petrovich was received by Polina Pavlovna's most venerable 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."

"Let's sit down," suggested Polina Pavlovna. Sit down. Polina Pavlovna moved closer. We sat down, were silent. There was a first kiss. Pyotr Petrovich got tired, offered to lie down, spread out a half-worn field cloak, thought: it came in handy. Lie down, lie down, fall in love. “Pyotr Petrovich is a prankster, a scoundrel,” Polina Pavlovna habitually said.

“Let's get married, let's get married!” whispered the bald nephew. “Let's get married, let's get married,” boomed the approaching dad. Pyotr Petrovich turned pale, staggered, then ran away. Having run, I thought: “Polina Petrovna is a wonderful party, it’s enough to take a steam bath.”

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