New CBB

Hey, I'm not really a "Beginner" as I've been at conworlding and conlanging for about 10 years now.

Anyway, I've always wondered: how many words are "enough" for a language? You have things like the Swadesh list with 100-200 words of "basic" vocabulary. Then you have dictionaries, say, of English, with upwards of 100,000 words or more.
And then there is the reality that the distinction between nouns and verbs (things/objects and actions/processes) is a very hazy distinction. So, how many words are enough to be "basic" to be able to communicate about everyday topics? How many words would one need to cover a wider gamut of professional, academic, liturgical, etc. terms in addition to this? In addition, research has shown that people seem to be able to retain somewhere around 50,000 words (Aitchenson, Words in the Mind).
Of course, this is a very hard number to pin down. But I still be extremely curious....

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CarpeMors decit "ubi est balneum rubrum in hero?" dum comedeban carotam in arcae pulchrae.

The thread right below this in the Beginners' Corner goes on about roughly the same topic.
I'd suggest checking out the answers there because they're close to the sort of answers you'd get.

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Ikasmu ati'uki nai uraiur.
Hinai nimuśim naimi nai sasamiur urukani. Śi'ama nai huhumiur na ni'amuśim nai sasamiur.
Pumaki nimuśim śima'a na ami nimuśim ara'a. Hini nihrasum i'aku tumra urukani na nihrasum sanik hraspir.

depends on which words... you can have nine thousand nautical terms and still not have an even basically speakable lang, whereas you can have three thousand words and have a perfectly good lang to speak about basic stuff.

Four. Four words are enough.

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♀♥♀
Dotjen
Kotanese

Bu, ga, zo, meu.

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My neurochemistry has fucked my impulse control, now I'm diagnosed OOD = oppositional opinion disorder, one of the most deadly diseases in former soviet union, but can be cured in the free world.

Is that a reference to a vague French television series I hear? Nice.
I personally disagree. Three words: Fus, ro, dah. And all your problems will be solved. Communication? Comprehension? Who needs that?

Realistically, however, I agree with previous posters in that it really depends on the intent of the language and the environmental situation of its speakers.

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I am a conlanger, a scuba diver, a belly dancer, an introvert, a reader, a writer, a gamer, a Superwholockian, a pianist, a clarinetist, a sailor, a CGI artist, a singer, a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, a hope-er, a pray-er, and a magic-bean-buyer. Who are you?

NOTEWORTHY ANSWER:
http://rejistania.wordpress.com/2010/08 ... lang-need/
IPPON


How many "legos" do you want to start with?
Some suggestions/parameters:
Swadesh lists: 100-215
Egyptian Hieroglyphs: 800 (Old Kingdom), 5,000 (Middle Kingdom)
Commonly used Japanese Kanji: 2,000 – 3,000



Hakuna mutata, mon.
I have some 's that are the same age or older than some of the members here.
It's all good.



Unless you're Barbarossa, a Klingon, or Mr. Eugene Krebbs. All the rest of their vocab comes from hung-over nautical similes & metaphors.
{ advocate }



Like Moja på Tvoja, Palenquero de San Basilio, and any number of contact-language pidgins, living, extinct, or still only a glimmer in the glossotect's eye.



@ Thakowsaizmu, Tanni, Kiwikami -
Now, if that hasn't actually developed into a ,
Aha! - http://olivier.fanton.free.fr/bouquins/Gabuzomeu.pdf

Zo. zo bu zozozomeu. Zo.
I understand it now. Really, I do.

That sure has the makings of a collaborative , hm?

Anyway. One word is only necessary - Raddah!

Mayhaps it be a certain laziness on our ye parte.
But me thinks that 6000 words is barely scraping the proverbial bottom of ye welle.

We needs to be very...pessimistic in our number of basic words to talk about shit.
6000 will get us to about middle school.
There are reasons why dictionaries are BIG. And it isn't because they're full of synonyms...

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CarpeMors decit "ubi est balneum rubrum in hero?" dum comedeban carotam in arcae pulchrae.

Peace, Seeker of Truth.

Rejistania's blogpost on the subject had the best answer to how many words were necessary in a conlang:

MOAR!

There will always be room for more words. 2,000 seems just plain kindergarten next to 4,000. 6,000 seems well nigh incomplete beside 8,000. 10,000 is absolutely jejune when compared to 50,000. The desire for nuance, for turn of phrase, for imagination and expressiveness will always goad us on to add more subsets. Is any natlang "complete"? Hardly. Why should it be any different with s?

I was comfortably fluent in Chinuk Wawa to around Intermediate Mid level (on the ACTFL scale) with a vocabulary of a couple hundred. So less "laziness" and more "depends on your definitions," and given CarpeMors stated scope of "communicate about everyday topics," I think it works.

(Note that this is in part due to the nature of the language. Wawa compounds like crazy, and most of them are transparent enough that I wouldn't consider them novel lexemes. So by carefully cherrypicking which words to teach me first, my teacher kinda rigged my vocab to get me having the most conversations with the least amount of words.)

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任何事物的发展都是物极必反，否极泰来。

Shiver me timbers!

There ya go! Three words, and given appropriate context, I'm sure they could serve to communicate most basic needs. Stop the presses, we've got what we came for! :D

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任何事物的发展都是物极必反，否极泰来。

My Veletan has a maximum limit of 23328 root words (but many more can be created via agglutination) due to the strict phonotactics. It seemed to me like enough.

By the way, Toki Pona has like 123 words. How does it cope?

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ILR 5 =
ILR 4 =
ILR 3 = None
ILR 2 =
ILR 1 = None
Abandoned = (Scots), , ,
Current Obsession = ASL

It sort of cheats. It uses tons of compounds that aren't immediately transparent, which means you have to memorize their meaning—so leaving such compounds out of the total word count is sort of misleading.

(For example, jan sewi, or "up-person," means "god." I wouldn't have guessed that though, so I would have to learn "jan sewi" basically as a new word, although the compound nature would certainly make it easier to remember. Wawa is much the same way; "God" is saxali ta?i man, or "Boss-man above.")

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任何事物的发展都是物极必反，否极泰来。

Well in that case, wouldn't a more accurate way to write it be jansewi - as one word?

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ILR 5 =
ILR 4 =
ILR 3 = None
ILR 2 =
ILR 1 = None
Abandoned = (Scots), , ,
Current Obsession = ASL

That is a remarkably well put answer, oh venerable Lambuzhao.

I think it would even give illumination to our queer old dean of conlanguages: Sarah Palin, the maker of *refudiate.

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CarpeMors decit "ubi est balneum rubrum in hero?" dum comedeban carotam in arcae pulchrae.

Thanks. Once in a Grand Harmonic Convergence, I get it just about right.




Lord knows, it's part and parcel with the conculture she's invented up yonder.




Arrrr, matey. Arrrrrr!

Maybe, but (and this has come up on the forum repeatedly) spaces are never a reliable sentinel for word boundaries. You can't even count on them in English—see dinner table. You can tell that's a single word for a number of reasons, one of which is the stress pattern. Compare:

"In the room was a black bird." (black.bird)
"In the room was a yellow table." (yel.low.ta.ble)
"In the room was a blackbird." (black.bird)
"In the room was a dinner table." (din.ner.ta.ble)

Just like you can tell the difference between a black bird and a blackbird by whether the bird is stressed, you can tell that "dinner table" is really a single-word compound, but we write it with a space anyway.

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任何事物的发展都是物极必反，否极泰来。

That's an orthographic convention. Some writing systems don't put spaces between words - but write all words together. Other writing systems/orthographies insert spaces in the middle of words - like English living room.

If we look at European languages, we can see that compounds are handled very differently in their respective standardised, written form. In some languages, the orthographic norm requires that basically all words be written together, without spaces -like the Swedish förstamajdemonstrationstalarstolsuppsättarassistent. In others - like English - the orthographic norm is more liberal and/or inconsistent in this respect.

We must always remember that language exists prior to writing. We can't define a word as "anything that is written without spaces". Rather, to have an orthographic convention saying that words must be written without spaces (which many languages - but not English - have) presupposes that we have a notion of a word, that exists prior to the orthography. Otherwise, the orthographic convention would be empty.

For a conlang, it is of course up to the creator which orthographic rules one wants to include.

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