Richness Of The Thai Language

[meadish_sweetball]

He could be striding, shuffling, limping, trudging, waddling, marching, tip-toeing

This is not really unique to English.

It does not take much effort to mirror that list of walking verbs in Swedish and top them up with synonyms (skrida/stega, hasa, halta/linka, traska, rulta/vagga, marschera, trippa) and an educated Thai native speaker could do the same in Thai.

Even if another language has fewer options to use for specific manners of walking, all it takes to get to the same meaning is using a few more words.

[Rikker]

Just as (purportedly) Innuit has 18 ways to describe the colour of snow, some languages DO have much larger vocabularies than others...it follows that a bigger vocabulary is better equipped to be more expressive in fewer words, and thus more comprehensible in dealing with complex concepts, and more flexible in creating poetry or prose.

I'm not trying to sound harsh here, but his whole paragraph is an incorrect assumption built on an urban myth, itself built upon a misunderstanding of the fundamental differences between languages. The "umpteen Eskimo words for snow" myth was debunked by linguists at least 30 years ago. However, it refuses to die, living on in popular conception, and reprinted in some poorly fact-checked article in the popular press at least a few times per year. It has been printed in reputable places like the New York Times so many times that it may never go away.

Geoffrey Pullum's 1991 article "The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax" (PDF link) is one of the more well-known example in the linguistics community (memorable because it's humorous). But even Wikipedia has a good article explaining this urban myth.

Here is a brief excerpt from a 1979 article:

The problem with trying to pin down exactly how many Eskimo words there for snow and/or ice — or for anything, for that matter — is that Eskimo is what's called a "polysynthetic" language, which means you sort of make up words as you go along, by connecting various particles to your basic root word. For example, we may add the suffix -tluk, bad, to kaniktshaq, snow, and come up with kaniktshartluk, bad snow.

By means of this system we may manufacture words that would fracture the jaw of an elk. To illustrate I offer the word takusariartorumagaluarnerpa, a chewy mouthful signifying: "Do you think he really intends to go look after it?" It takes nerve to flog your way through a word of this magnitude.

This is a simplistic explanation, but that's the gist of the basic underlying misunderstanding.

If you want to read up on why counting words is problematic and entirely useless in determining how "complex" a language is, I suggest reading up on basic morphological typology, in particular the difference between a morpheme, a lexeme, and a "word", and the difference between an isolating language and a synthetic language.

Different languages have different ratios of morphemes (meaning-carrying units) to words (units which can be uttered and understood as meaningful in isolation). English "bicycles" has three morphemes in one word 'bi' (two) 'cycle' (wheeled vehicle) and 's' (plural). A language like Inuit clusters many, many more morphemes into a single word, in a way impossible to express without whole sentences in English.

In reality it is a spectrum -- Thai or Chinese are often cited on the isolating end -- as there is little to no use of prefixes and suffixes. However, English is also considered an isolating language, because it has relatively little of this, too.

This misconception derives in part, I think from the fact that there is no universally understood definition of "word" -- even in English, let alone across all languages. Though it has a particular definition in linguistics, it is used with varying meanings by the general public, which leads to confusion like the Eskimo snow words myth. Are some languages lexically rich in ways other languages are not? Absolutely. But consider that English has its own share of words for snow:

avalanche

blizzard

blowing snow

dusting

flurry

frost

hail

hardpack

igloo (borrowed from the Inuit word for 'house')

powder

sleet

slush

snow

snow bank

snow cornice

snow fort

snow house

snow man

snowflake

snowstorm

[list from here]

And with a modifier or two, we could easily expand that list.

Take a local example. Thai has an amazing number of words for different types of traditional woven baskets and containers. English does not have exact equivalents for nearly any of them. But then, Thai does not historically have terms for gravy boat or salt and pepper shakers, either. There's just no scientific (or even logical) basis for claiming that one language is more or less complex, or more or less capable of complex expression.

As I mentioned before -- it is impossible to translate Thai poetry in a way that preserves the complex alliteration, internal rhyme, meter and rhythm of the original. Even translating just the meaning would fundamentally change -- even destroy -- the work. No less impossible than Jabberwocky, I say.

A language with more "words" IS indeed more descriptive and carries greater depth of concept.

This is just an assumption based on a confusion of morphemes, lexemes, and words.

Take "The man was walking". I could use adverbs to be more descriptive. More importantly, I could replace "walking" with numerous other words that paint the scene more effectively: He could be striding, shuffling, limping, trudging, waddling, marching, tip-toeing,..... Also, I could talk about his gait or his pace to add to the picture.

Here are some Thai expressions for different types of walking (and a few other verb phrases which include the verb เดิน 'to walk'):

เดิน, เดินหน้า, เดินผ่าน, เดินป่า, เดินเล่น, เดินขบวน, เดินทาง, เดินทางไกล, เดินเท้า, เดินข้าม, เดินไปเดินมา, เดินเรื่อง, เดินจงกรม, เดินเกม, เดินอากาศ, เดินตลาด, เดินสายไฟ, เดินทะเล, เดินแถว, เดินเอา, เดินสวนกัน, เดินควง, เดินควง, เดินลัด, เดินทัพ, เดินธุดงค์, เดินเหิน, เดินหมาก, เดินย้อน, เดินเลาะ, เดินทอดน่อง, เดินจ้ำ, เดินสวนสนาม, เดินตัวปลิว, เดินสะพัด, เดินโซเซ, เดินโซซัดโซเซ, เดินเตร่, เดินเตาะแตะ, เดินเรียงแถว, เดินต้วมเตี้ยม, เดินพล่าน, เดินรี่, เดินทน, เดินรี่เข้าไป, เดินแต้ม, เดินกินลม, เดินยาม, เดินตุปัดตุเป๋, เดินโต๊ะ, เดินต๊อกๆ, เดินย่ำเท้า, เดินทอง, เดินกร่าง, เดินเข่า, เดินหมาย, เดินเฉียง, เดินข่าว, เดินจักร, เดินเลี่ยงไปทางอื่น, เดินตัดสนาม, เดินแกว่งไปแกว่งมา, เดินส่ายก้น, เดินสะเงาะสะแงะ, เดินกระหย่ง, เดินเด้งหน้าเด้งหลัง, เดินขย่มธรณี, เดินแฉะแบะ, เดินโฉ่งฉ่าง

That is only the basic verb 'to walk'. There are other foot-motion verbs and adverbs like, วิ่ง, ย่าง, ย่างเท้า, ย่างก้าว, ก้าว, ก้าวเท้า, ย่ำ, ย่ำเท้า, สาว, สา่วเท้า, ย่อง, ไต่, กราก, กราย, กรีดกราย, กรุยกราย, ซุน, ดำเนิน, ดุ่ม, ดุ่มๆ, ตะลอน, เตร่, เตร็ดเตร่, ท่อมๆ, ป๋อ, ฝ่า, ยักแย่ยักยัน, ลุย, หย่ง, อาด, อาดๆ, เยื้อง, เราะ, เลียบ, แห่, โขยก, โผลกเผลก.

Not to mention various other combinations of these, or combinations with other words not mentioned.

Neither Thai nor English is unusual in this regard. There is no language which is more "shallow" than others -- even if it lacks the vocabulary to describe certain things. That's where borrowing comes in. Languages are enriched and expanded by borrowing from others, and English has certainly borrowed *copiously* from other languages!

[SoftWater]

Thanks Rikker for debunking the Eskimo snow words myth - have to admit I was guilty of perpetuating this one too. However, this thread is repeating much of a discussion Harcourt started elsewhere, see

Thai-Partners-Teaching-Language

in which I tried to point out that the number of vocabulary items in a language proves nothing about its ability to be 'descriptive' or 'accurate'. I won't repeat those points here, but I will make a new one.

Round the turn of the 19/20th century, through their work on formal logic, Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell amongst others established the now more or less uncontentious point that the basic unit of meaning is not a word but a sentence (famously 'a word has meaning only in the context of a sentence'). Wittgenstein added to that thesis the insight that sentences are used to DO something (i.e., reflect some interest of the speaker or audience).

Sorry to get technical, but to bring it back to the point at issue, this shows that how many vocabulary items a language may or may not have (whose number is, as Rikker rightly points out, rather arbitrary anyway depending on how one defines 'word') is irrelevant to how descriptive the language is. A language is as descriptive as it needs to be - which means as descriptive as the people who use it need it to be.

Languages reflect the culture and social interests of their users. I can't see that there's really anything else to say on this subject, save for - like Rikker and the Eskimo snow myth - the constant need to remind each other of things forgotten that people in other times and places spent much time and effort trying to teach us.

Edited July 21, 2009 by SoftWater

[Harcourt]

Yes, Thanks Rikker for debunking the Eskimo snow myth.

Also for authoritatively providing examples of Thai that show it too has broadness of expression.

I take on board your point about Thai baskets and European salt shakers.

I do however stand on my statement, "A language with more "words" IS indeed more descriptive and carries greater depth of concept."

This is not "just an assumption based on a confusion of morphemes, lexemes, and words."

I speak Fijian and Tuvaluan, both languages having only an alphabet of 20 or 21 letters (depending on if you take the alphabet in very modern use which has added a letter). For a start, this limits the number of phonemes (I think that's the term....I'm sure you will kinow what I mean), thus the number of available sounds to make a spoken word is limited. Every word ends in a vowel sound, limiting the language again. The language is not tonal, another limitation.....and thus the languages have very limited vocabularies.

Take temperature: Things are either hot or cold, there is no warm, tepid, cool, freezing (of course, in the tropics), etc. and no metaphores for temperature either. I can not say "the water is tepid". I must say "the water is not hot and not cold".

I maintain that "tepid" is more descriptive, more accurate, and less clumsy than "not hot and not cold".

We are discussing the richness of Thai here and not the paucity of depth of some obscure Polynesian dialect, I know.....so lets get back to that.

I love this thread and the wisdom of the posters.