This post contains a weekly selection of links related to language and words in the news. These can be items from the latest news, blog posts or interesting websites related to global English and language change, and language education too.

Do contact us if you would like to submit a link for us to include. We’d love to hear from you.

Global English

Pretty girls make men dumb
Inspired by Evan Frendo’s really interesting post on impression management (IM), I went hunting for research papers in the University of Pennsylvania’s online libraries.

Study of Oregon Latinos Finds Language Gap
A new OSU study of Oregon’s Latino residents shows that while first- and second-generation immigrants from Mexico or other Spanish-speaking countries maintain a Spanish-speaking dominance, English is dominant by the third generation. By the fourth generation, the study shows, any traces of Spanish language are almost completely minimized.

Losing campaign to fend off English
I rather sympathise with the French, who object to the fashionable embrace of English. It’s not new, of course. The Parisien beau monde adopted anglicisms like le gentleman, le redingote (riding coat), le snob and le fair play in the 19th century. In the 1950s dawn of le rock’n roll, people caught up on le hit parade during le weekend.

English-language skills taking off among pilots
Aviation leaders are reporting success with a decade-long push to make sure pilots and air traffic controllers around the globe are proficient in English – the official language of aviation worldwide.

Language change and slang

Q is for Quote marks
Quote marks, after all, are not innocent bystanders in the processes of text creation and interpretation. Traditionally, of course, they separated quoted matter from the writer’s own words. Hence, they’re called (variously) quote marks, quotation marks, speech marks and so on. But they’ve come to fulfill a number of other functions too.

Verbed!
The history of English, however, suggests that the language is remarkably flexible in terms of what can be verbed. Almost any word can be drafted to serve as a verb, even words we think of as eternal and unchanging, stuck in their more traditional roles. It’s easy to think of scenarios where “She me’d him too much and they broke up” and “My boss tomorrowed the meeting again” make sense.

Indian words in literary English
Tracking Indian words in English has been a favourite topic with columnists in the Indian media. This decade has seen the publication of new editions of dictionaries, and each one has added new words from Indian sources, borrowed either in India or in England.

Improve your English

Cartoon: Leaks
For weeks, we’ve been hearing about the  BP oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico. […] Yesterday, however, a different sort of leak hit the headlines, when whistleblower website WikiLeaks published more than 90,000 classified war documents, painting a largely bleak picture of the war in Afghanistan.

Vocab Builder: A Way With Words
One of my favorite podcasts is “A Way With Words.” Martha and Grant are entertaining at answering callers questions about language, and AWWW is a great source of words. Here are a few I’ve picked up recently.

Books, words, science and the history of language

Wanting your life back
I want my life back feels to me like a recent coinage by somebody. (Of course, I could be wrong; I am reporting a mere intuition, which could be solely due to the recency illusion.) It is not a normal sort of phrase.

Negative stereotypes may affect both learning and performance
Negative stereotypes not only jeopardize how members of stigmatized groups might perform on tests and in other skill-based acts, such as driving and golf putting, but they also can inhibit actual learning, according to a new study by Indiana University researchers.

Video

Professor David Crystal discusses Global English (5:12):
Is control of English shifting away from British and American native speakers?

It seems there’s a new, and somewhat disturbing, wiki on the block – wikileaks.

Apparently a whistle-blowing website where sensitive material can be posted online in such a way as it to be untraceable, wikileaks has come to the nation’s interest amidst news of leaked details about the US military campaign in Afghanistan. (I say ‘apparently’, since I’ve been unable to access the site myself – it keeps timing out, probably due to too much traffic! – and so am basing this on The Guardian’s coverage of the incident.)

The word wiki, of course, relates to websites that can be added to and modified by users themselves, for example Wikipedia. We also now have  WikiAnswers, WikiMapia and wikibooks. Around the websites themselves, we see wiki communities (groups bound together by use of a wiki), wiki nodes (pages on wikis that describe related wikis), neighbour wikis (containing similar information or appealing to the same audience) and delegate wikis (sort of the next rung down the ladder in the information hierarchy). And then of course there’s wikiality – something which is deemed to be true simply because a lot of people believe it, rather than on the basis of any actual evidence.

In a similar sort of vein, we’ve seen hacktivist for someone who changes or manipulates information on someone else’s website, in order to get their own political views across (based, of course, on hacker), and rumint – intelligence information that comes from unreliable sources, especially rumours. (This latter I find worrying enough, without the thought of it then appearing on the web for any old nutter to act on!)

Whilst I like the basic wiki idea, I do find the latest addition to the stable pretty scary. Apparently, anyone can go onto the site and publish anything – national security information, state secrets – that they believe the public has a right to know. The White House has already condemned the site and accused it of putting the lives of military personnel at risk. The site’s founder defends it, saying the information was old enough to be of only ‘investigative’, rather than ‘operational’ significance, and that information is vetted before being published.

What the correct balance is between ‘need to know’ and ‘right to know’, I’m not sure, but I do go slightly cold at the thought of a random bunch of people sitting round a piece of web editing software making the decision, given that they don’t necessarily have access to all the information. Then again, even with (allegedly) all the information, those making the on-the-ground decisions don’t have the best track record, so maybe it’s not as bad as it seems.

Either way, wiki is proving to be a highly productive word, and its reach is steadily growing. Wikipedia alone lists more than 80 wikis, ranging from aviation safety information (SKYbrary) to ancient Chinese board games (Go). And I’m sure there’s plenty more to come.

This post contains a weekly selection of links related to language and words in the news. These can be items from the latest news, blog posts or interesting websites related to global English and language change, and language education too.

Do contact us if you would like to submit a link for us to include. We’d love to hear from you.

Global English

Michigan English
Now Michigan English is not all one thing, but there are surprising differences between the English used here and what you encounter in Ft. Wayne or London, Ontario, or Green Bay.

All immigrants face mandatory language test
Last month Ottawa made its language proficiency test mandatory for all skilled immigrant applicants, including native English and French speakers. The so-called “ministerial instructions” stipulate officials are not to process applications without language test results, starting June 26.

Language change and slang

Palin’s ‘Refudiate’ Not In The Dictionary
After the former Alaska governor noticed her mistake, or somebody told her about it, she deleted her tweet and retweeted the comments, switching ‘Refudiate’ with actual words, like ‘Reject’ and ‘Refute’.

Don’t be too quick to ‘refudiate’ new words
It takes about 20 years to know whether a word is going to stick, Metcalf says, and 40 to be sure.

In praise of jargon – a defence of the apparently indefensible
According to a YouGov survey, management jargon is choking the life out of meaningful communication in the workplace. Senior managers think it’s harmless enough but most employees want to see the back of it because they feel it creates barriers and misunderstandings at work.

Language teaching and resources

Unraveling English Language Teaching acronyms
One of the first things you may have noticed in this new career is the abundance of confusing acronyms, which you should know is basically one way long term practitioners have attempted to make language teaching more hip and yet more scientific/technical.

Improve your English

Data are or data is?
Is it singular or plural? It’s a word we use every day here on the Datablog – but are we getting it completely wrong?

A distinct difference
The difference between distinct and distinctive is subtle. Both words describe something that stands out, that is unmistakable for anything else. To understand the difference in use, we need to turn to the contexts in which the two words are used, to their collocational environment.

Books, words, science and the history of language

Foreign accents make speakers seem less truthful to listeners
Because an accent makes a person harder to understand, listeners are less likely to find what the person says as truthful, researchers found. The problem of credibility increases with the severity of the accent.

Stephen Fry to explore language in BBC series
Fry, who said language was one of “many passions”, added that he loved Anglo-Saxon words that were “just themselves, like ‘bundle’ – what a lovely word”.

Enid Blyton lingo gets an update
“Very subtle changes have been made to remove the barriers that stood between readers and the story.” In the original text, for example, Dick says: “She must be jolly lonely all by herself” which has been updated to read: “She must get lonely all by herself.” “Mother and father” become “mum and dad” and “school tunic” becomes ‘uniform’.”

This post contains a weekly selection of links related to language and words in the news. These can be items from the latest news, blog posts or interesting websites related to global English and language change, and language education too.

Do contact us if you would like to submit a link for us to include. We’d love to hear from you.

Global English

On antinyms
Regular readers of this blog will recall a previous post about new words, one of which is bagonizing. We bagonized. All other passengers came, took up their bags and went, until eventually we were the only ones left at the carousel.

Beijing Renews English-Language Drive
Public servants in Beijing will face considerable pressure over the next five years to learn English after the city government launched a campaign to improve their language skills and penalize those who fail to meet expected proficiency levels.

Language change and slang

On Language, The Web Is At War With Itself
Internet memes and e-lingo are pumping new vitality into popular English parlance. But is it possible the Internet could also be stifling creativity in language? More on that in a moment.

Don’t forget to do the Meme Quiz!

‘Not a word’ is not an argument
Irregardless, supposably, ain’t, impactful, unfriend, defriend, disincentivise, signage, mentee, guesstimate, probletunity, orientate, loginned… Do these words make you twitchy? Would you say that some of them are not words? Disincentivise doesn’t fill me with thrills, but there’s no doubting its validity. Orientate is probably less reviled, but some people still reject its status as a word.

Language teaching and resources

Technology affecting English language in schools – Survey
Some teachers have complained about the poor performance of students in English Language examinations due to technology.

Improve your English

Words in the News: Losing One’s Touch
If you lose your touch, you can no longer do something as well as you could before.

How to Write Clear Sentences
Good writing is clear and concise and gets to the point. Readers don’t want to rummage through a messy verbal flea market to discover one or two sparkly gems of information.

Books, words, science and the history of language

Verbal cues improve visual detection
The study demonstrated that language can change what we see and can also enhance perceptual sensitivity. Verbal cues can influence even the most elementary visual processing and inform our understanding of how language affects perception.

When Did We First ‘Rock the Mic’?
Being a historical lexicographer in the 21st century is a task worthy of Janus, with one eye on the language’s past and another on new information about language that is emerging from advances in the digital world. So it was only fitting that my conference paper focused on how the Web is opening up previously unexplored terrain in documenting the history of American slang.

This post contains a weekly selection of links related to language and words in the news. These can be items from the latest news, blog posts or interesting websites related to global English and language change, and language education too.

Do contact us if you would like to submit a link for us to include. We’d love to hear from you.

Global English

The Economist Debates: English
This house believes that the English-speaking world should adopt American English.

Disney to expand language schools in China
Mickey Mouse might not be the most obvious choice as a language teacher but he and Donald Duck are being put to work in China by Walt Disney as part of a rapid expansion of a schools programme that aims to teach English to 150,000 children a year by 2015.

Linguists Debate: Does Obama Talk Like a Girl?
Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker caused a stir last week by stating, “If Bill Clinton was our first black president, as Toni Morrison once proclaimed, then Barack Obama may be our first woman president.”

Language change and slang

Many English Speakers Cannot Understand Basic Grammar
Research into grammar by academics at Northumbria University suggests that a significant proportion of native English speakers are unable to understand some basic sentences.

Overusing words dulls their meanings
Is there a point when words should be put to rest? My picks would be amazing and phenomenal. These two have crept into the lexicon of so many they have lost their power.

Language teaching and resources

Japanese Study English By…Tweeting?
Twitter followers in Japan have demonstrated their fervor for the social networking tool, setting a world record in generating “tweets per second” after a recent World Cup game. Now, creative merchants are coming up with books and blogs that connect Twitter with another national infatuation: Learning English.

EMCC professor rewrites English learning
Traditionally, college-level students who do not speak English but want to study in the United States must pass the Test of English as a Foreign Language, or TOEFL, exam before they can begin classes. Those who do not pass are sequestered into English as a Second Language, or ESL, courses until they can prove their profi-ciency in the language, at which time they may matriculate into regular college courses.

Improve your English

On since/ago
The rule says that since and ago are incompatible, because since refers to an event that has current relevance whereas ago refers to a completed event in the past.

Books, words, science and the history of language

The Origins of ‘One-Off’
The off in one-off does not, in fact, stem from some corruption of the word of. Rather, this British usage of off typically appears with a number to indicate a quantity of items produced in some manufacturing process.

Is the Thesaurus Your Friend?
Using or not using a thesaurus is an individual choice for each writer. Many writers agree with King that using a thesaurus ultimately cramps their creativity. But if you feel that a thesaurus would benefit your writing, why not use it?

Funny

Cartoon: Meals on Wheels

This post contains a weekly selection of links related to language and words in the news. These can be items from the latest news, blog posts or interesting websites related to global English and language change, and language education too.

Do contact us if you would like to submit a link for us to include. We’d love to hear from you.

Global English – in the world of sport

Can tennis writers tell their eggs from their bagels?
“When you speak to tennis journalists,” Tim Henman once said, “you notice how little they understand. I am embarrassed for them. They know nothing about the game.” It was a scathing critique and the Observer led the case for the defence, arguing that the role of the tennis press is to paint a broad picture rather than display an intimate knowledge of tactics and technique.

With so many nations in WCup what language do referees use?
Thirty referees from 28 countries, including our very own Subkhiddin Mohd Salleh, are officiating at the World Cup in South Africa.
Have you ever wondered what is the language they use to keep all the players, plus the coaches on the sidelines, in check when things get a bit fiery?

Language change and slang

‘Non-moms’ find child-free terminology offensive
Though it may seem like trivial semantics, Stern says the language used by a society is indicative of its values.

On needed words
A guest appearance on BBC Radio 4’s ‘Saturday Live’ last week has initiated a flurry of correspondence, and the only place to focus it seems to be this blog. Once again it is the ludic propensity of language that has grabbed the popular imagination – in the same way that the ‘foreign catch-phrases’ theme (see my last post) has done.

Improve your English

From bitch to beach
It is interesting that the potential confusion can extend into written English. You’d think that even if hearing the difference is difficult, nevertheless seeing it and spelling it would be straightforward.

Books, words, science and the history of language

3D fatigue
Films in 3D are the latest wheeze to get bums on seats in cinemas and 3D-TV is now technically available if you can afford the set and can find something to watch on it. However, a problem has surfaced: eyestrain. Some filmgoers say that viewing movies using special glasses is causing them eye problems, headaches and nausea.

Orangutans at Durrell contribute to dictionary
Experts from St Andrews University spent time at Durrell creating what’s being described as the ape dictionary.

Seeing Languages Differently
How we see the world impacts our use of language and our use of language impacts how we see the world. Cognitive scientists in the vein of Benjamin Whorf regularly investigate the connections to thought and language use, including how visual perception varies across languages.

Video

David Crystal – Texts and Tweets: myths and realities (31 minutes)

England’s World Cup is over, following the team’s 4-1 defeat by Germany last Sunday. According to one online report of the match, ‘The first goal was a tribute to striker Miroslav Klose’s strength and poaching skills.’ Only a few days earlier, England fans had been celebrating a 1-0 victory over Slovenia. The scorer, with a sharply taken volley close to Slovenia’s goal, was Jermain Defoe, and ‘Defoe the poacher sends England through’ was the headline of one report.

Why ‘poaching’ and ‘poacher’? Well, in football-speak, a poacher (or goal poacher) is an opportunistic striker who specializes in scoring from close range, usually inside the penalty box. The term derives from the sense of poacher denoting a person who illegally catches or kills an animal, bird, or fish on someone else’s property. So a goal poacher is a striker who is thought of as sneakily ‘stealing’ goals from under the defenders’ noses.

You sometimes find a writer or commentator referring to a striker’s poacher’s instinct. Here’s a recent assessment of Spain’s David Villa in the Guardian newspaper:

Speed, lethal finishing and a poacher’s instinct have seen him bag a hatful of goals in the last couple of seasons.

Note also that word bag. One meaning of this verb is ‘to catch or kill an animal that you are hunting’, and the hunting image is sometimes extended with the phrase bag a brace. In general use this refers to the shooting of a pair of game birds, like grouse or pheasant, but in football parlance it means ‘to score two goals’:

Ronaldinho bagged a brace as Milan crushed Juventus 3-0.

There is a rich seam of metaphor for goal-scoring drawn from the vocabulary of hunting and theft. A striker can be described as a predator. On a good day he might plunder a hat-trick. Goal-scoring chances are taken, goals can netted as well as poached. Winners are snatched. To nick a goal is to score on the counter-attack, after a team has spent most of the game defending. Such a goal might result in a smash-and-grab. Literally this refers to a crime involving breaking the window of a car or shop in order to steal things quickly. In the context of a football match, though, the term describes a victory by one team (usually the away side) who have been completely dominated by their opponents for almost the entire game but have nevertheless managed to break out from defence just before the final whistle to score an unlikely and probably undeserved last-minute winner.

And what would be the response of the defeated team (and their fans) in these circumstances? ‘We were robbed’, of course.

This post contains a weekly selection of links related to language and words in the news. These can be items from the latest news, blog posts or interesting websites related to global English and language change, and language education too.

Do contact us if you would like to submit a link for us to include. We’d love to hear from you.

Global English

The biggest vocabulary?
English is a rich and beautiful language, not least because England has been conquered by Vikings and Normans, and has happily been open to foreign influence through its history.

Phrases We Love Too Much
A couple of colleagues and readers have also noted the rampant use of the expression “go viral” to describe anything that spreads widely online.

The new custodians of English language
Conceit comes before a fall. I was roundly thrashed. The two young ladies began doubling and tripling their word scores, surveying the board and measuring semantic possibilities as Bonaparte might have surveyed a battlefield. The score sheet was spattered with the blood of my ego.

Language change and slang

The ‘Tweet’ Debate
Of course, new technology terms sprout and spread faster than ever. And we don’t want to seem paleolithic. But we favor established usage and ordinary words over the latest jargon or buzzwords.

Language evolves following a ‘bumpy ride‘ not straightforward path
Linguistic change differs from biological evolution and socio-cultural change because of the way language is organized and learned.

Improve your English

Words and Their Stories: Mouth Expressions
People use their mouths for many things. They eat, talk, shout and sing. They smile and they kiss. In the English language, there are many expressions using the word mouth. But some of them are not so nice.

Business English metaphors
Business English uses different vocabulary and metaphors from everyday speech. Metaphors are word pictures that help explain a situation by comparing it to something else. In business, metaphors are borrowed from other disciplines.

Mind the Gap: There’s a Name for It
The use of a verb phrase in the present tense to refer to an event that took place in the past (“So this guy walks into a bar . . .”): historical present.

Language technology

New software can detect depression in bloggers’ texts
The software, developed at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU), is capable of identifying language that can indicate the writer’s psychological state, which could serve as a screening tool.

Books, words, science and the history of language

Meet the New Swing Voters: Walmart Moms
“Walmart Moms are cross-pressured and conflicted–they approve of President Obama and want to see a government that helps people rather than stays out of the way. Yet, these voters are strongly negative toward Congress and lean toward voting for Republicans in the Fall. Walmart Moms are the quintessential swing vote …”

Top 40 Chicago Words—Our Contributions to the English Language
The moment of creation for a word often remains elusive. Typically (at least before the Internet age), a word gains popularity in local speech and then gets written down somewhere. When lexicographers start tracing lineage, the closest they can come to pinpointing a word’s birth is frequently its first appearance in print.

How do bilingual children distinguish between languages?

Klingon and other “crazy ideas” in book about invented tongues
Language makes us human. So – why mess with it?

Funny

The 3 Most Common Uses of Irony
What is important to remember is that while these people are arguing back and forth about it, the rest of us are doing more interesting things …

This post contains a weekly selection of links related to language and words in the news. These can be items from the latest news, blog posts or interesting websites related to global English and language change, and language education too.

Do contact us if you would like to submit a link for us to include. We’d love to hear from you.

Global English

Britain’s new romance language is English
Some also argue that English is best learned in a country where it’s spoken everyday, rather than forcing people into classrooms abroad, which could be of varying standards and potentially costly.

Canada – a linguistic battleground between the US and Britain
Though Canada is still part of the Commonwealth, our unique history of colonisation and the sheer geographic range of the country make the enforcement of consistent language rules difficult from coast to coast.

40 South Africanisms you should know
HUNDREDS: Normally repeated twice in a sentence as in “Hundreds, bru, hundreds.” It expresses either total agreement with what someone has just said, or confirmation that your life is all good [...] Can also be used as a way of simply saying yes.

Language change and slang

Britain declares war on words that snuck into our skedule…
Other leading hates include ‘snuck’ as the past tense of ‘sneak’ and ‘dove’ as the past tense of ‘dive’; driver’s license instead of driving licence; overly rather than over; autopsy for post-mortem; burglarized instead of burgled; filling out forms instead of filling them in; fries for chips; chips for crisps; and food to go as opposed to take away.

‘New York Times’ Bans the Word ‘Tweet’
“One test is to ask yourself whether people outside of a target group regularly employ the terms in question. Many people use Twitter, but many don’t; my guess is that few in the latter group routinely refer to “tweets” or “tweeting.” Someday, “tweet” may be as common as “e-mail.” Or another service may elbow Twitter aside next year, and “tweet” may fade into oblivion. [...]”

Don’t Like English Spelling? Tuf Luk
The argument that English spelling should be overhauled is nothing new, of course. Benjamin Franklin and Mark Twain were both advocates for “spelling reform,” and George Bernard Shaw’s will stipulated that a competition should be held to develop a new, more efficient English writing system.

Improve your English

Spelling mistakes – public and embarrassing ones
Let’s be honest – we all make spelling mistakes sometimes. It may be because we don’t know the spelling, or we think we know it but we are wrong. Often it’s just a typo or lack of concentration and editing. Sometimes the spelling mistake doesn’t matter too much, but other times – it really does!

Excising Abstract Appendages: Cut the Clutter
Whatever we call them, expressions such as basic fundamentals, new innovations, past history, and future plans are wasteful.

English picture idioms

Language teaching and resources

Redlined. Correction isn’t the most important thing
For schoolchildren, the red pen has long been a fearsome weapon, blazoning the marks of failure on once pristine writing assignments. And in recent years, many teachers have turned down the volume, switching from red’s loud rebuke to gentler purple pens. Now research has illuminated another aspect of the red-pen effect: A study published last month reveals that teachers armed with red pens actually grade more severely than those using blue.

English Language Learners and the Power of Personal Stories
Community organizers talk about the difference between “irritation” and “agitation.” We tend to irritate people when we push them to do what we want them to do — when we “fill up the pail,” in the words of William Butler Yeats. But we can agitate people when we challenge them to take action on something that they believe is in their self-interest. That’s when we can “light a fire.”

G is for Gerund
Why this antipathy to the poor old gerund?

Funny

David Mitchell’s Soap Box: Authenticity
Pudding, sweet or dessert? ‘Valett’ or ‘valay’? David worries about the linguistic mantraps the English set each other and the challenge of being authentically him.

This post contains a weekly selection of links related to language and words in the news. These can be items from the latest news, blog posts or interesting websites related to global English and language change.

Please contact us if you would like to submit a link for us to include. We’d love to hear from you.

Global English

What Does “BP” Stand For?
Since the explosion of BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig back in April, the oil company’s name has been variously interpreted as “Big Profits,” “Biggest Polluter,” “Broken Promises,” and “Beyond Patience.”

On foreign ludicity
It’s good to see ludic linguistic ingenuity alive and well, and engaging with foreign languages – though I wonder, in this day and age, what proportion of the population will get the jokes.

Crash blossom finds remain
You’d think a team of subeditors would have been called out on a crash blossom alert, and fixed it. But not so.

Just Talking To Native Speakers Is The Worst Way To Learn A Language
In actuality, one of the major concepts of ALG [Automatic Language Growth] is that words are not the key to a language, meaning is. You could memorize 5,000 words from a dictionary and not be able to string a sentence together or express yourself in any meaningful way.

Language change and slang

Cool
It all started in January, when Toby Lichtig reviewed “Journey by Moonlight,” a 1937 novel by the Hungarian writer Antal Szerb that has recently been translated into English by Len Rix. Lichtig gave a thumbs up to Rix’s rendering, but he complained about the text’s occasional anachronisms, particularly the use of cool “in its contemporary sense” …

Improve your English

Is a Troop One Person or a Group?
Memorial Day is next week, when we in the U.S. honor members of the military who have died in the line of duty. So in today’s article I’ll answer a question some readers have had about the word “troops.”

What’s the best way to break bad news?
The delivery of bad news is now a successful money-spinning television format. Millions tune in to see Lord Alan Sugar point his finger and say: “You’re fired” or Simon Cowell to simply roll his eyes and tell another singer they’ve failed the audition. But real life is different.

World Cup Spelling – noticing vowels
An activity to help people spell the names of hte 2010 World Cup countries.

Language teaching and resources

Month in Review – May’s Most Popular Items
The school year is winding down for many of us, but there is still time to try something new in the classroom. If that’s not the case for you, May’s most popular links might give you something to think about for next fall when school starts again.

Books, words, science and the history of language

Minifalsehood: We can’t tell what a word is!?!?

I am looking at the question: How many words are there in a language? I’d like to know for languages in general, comparatively, and for pedagogical reasons, in some well known western language which may as well be English.
For possible answers, check this blog post.

Second language learners recall native language when reading
Adults fluent in English whose first language is Chinese retrieve their native language when reading in English, according to new research in the June 2 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience. This study suggests that people who learn a second language in adolescence or later recall the sounds of words from their native language.