Perception of "educated" vocabulary in Germanic languages vs Chinese, Arabic, or Romance languages

[Raphael]

I've thought for a while that there might be one serious difference between the perception of Germanic languages on the one hand, and some other languages and language groups, such as Chinese, Arabic, or the Romance languages on the other hand, by their own respective speakers.

In the Germanic languages - especially English, but, I think, also the others to some extent - there are many technical, scientific, or academic terms, sometimes as alternatives to colloquial terms, sometimes to describe things for which there is no colloquial term, that were taken from Latin, French, or some other Romance language. In contrast to that, much or most of the colloquial vocabulary goes back to older Germanic languages, and perhaps all the way to Proto-Germanic.

In the Romance languages, there might be less of a contrast in that regard: the technical, academic, and scientific terms are often taken from Latin or another Romance language, and the colloquial vocabulary - well, that often goes back to Latin, too.

In Modern Chinese variants and Modern Arabic variants, again, both a lot of the "educated" vocabulary and a lot of the colloquial vocabulary goes back, respectively, to Classical Chinese and Classical Arabic.

Now, what I'm wondering is, does this have any serious psychological impact on how different registers of those languages are perceived by their own speakers? For instance, I guess that in many languages, the way academics talk often comes across as snotty and full of fancy words to regular people, but I wonder if that effect might be stronger among speakers of Germanic languages.

[xxx]

in French, scholar words are drawn from mainly Greek and also Latin roots...
a bit like the Latin mass, it conferred a bit of sacredness, or magic, on incomprehensible words,
particularly in medicine where the name of the disease is already the beginning of its cure,
and where earache is less acting than otitis...

nowadays, English words are more common,
but this vocabulary easily penetrates everyday language...
Franglais is a recurrently decried evil,
especially when it also affects French morphosyntax,
and when the Frenglish word is absolutely incomprehensible to a native English speaker...

[hwhatting]

Can't say how people feel about it, but at least for some varieties of Arabic and French, the distance between the inherited colloquial lexicon and the re-loaned "cultismos" can seem as big as in Germanic; e.g, in Fench I don't guess any speaker who hasn't been told how they are related will be able to connect suivre and conséquence. And in Arabic, the varieties that people speak (the so-called "dialects", which mostly are as far from Classical Arabic and MSA / FusHa as the Romance languages are from Latin) often have contractions, syn- and apocopes that make it difficult to see the connection between a "dialect" word and etymologically related words in MSA.

[Estav]

Next to English, the language I know best is French. I agree with hwhatting that there is a salient gap between inherited French vocabulary and learned Latinate words--I'm not sure that these layers of the vocabulary feel any closer than the equivalents in English, actually. E.g. the concept of a "collateral adjective" seems just about as relevant in French as in English--despite being less distant in terms of their diachronic sources, [mɛʁ] and [matɛʁnɛl] aren't much more phonetically similar than [ˈmʌðəɹ] and [məˈtəɹnəl]. I think Russian and perhaps other Slavic languages may have a similar phenomenon where learned words are borrowed from Old Church Slavonic forms.

Of course, speakers don't have the etymologies of words stored in their heads; aside from inherited terms being correlated with simple frequency, the other thing that I think contributes to a synchronic sense of different layers of vocabulary is different phoneme frequencies and distributional patterns. This is found in French as well as in English; e.g. consonant clusters like /pt/, /kt/ tend to be found in learned words, having been turned to other sounds in inherited vocabulary. In both languages, there are a number of words that are technically "borrowed" from another language family but that have been well integrated to the native stratum of the lexicon, so that only an etymologist could tell you that they are not native; e.g. "boue" in French, "school" in English, and to a large extent many more recent French loans to English also, I would say (e.g. "flower"/"flour", "beast", "air" vs. "blossom", "bird", "water").

I had the impression that German actually is notably different from English in this regard, despite them both being Germanic languages; wasn't there a movement to make German learned vocabulary less Latinate? Compared to English, there seems to be a lot of medical, philosophical and official terminology in German that is formed simply from compounding native vocabulary (although Greek and Latin contributions are still quite significant).

[Raphael]

Thank you for your perspectives!

I had the impression that German actually is notably different from English in this regard, despite them both being Germanic languages; wasn't there a movement to make German learned vocabulary less Latinate?

There was, but I think it was at most a partial success.

Compared to English, there seems to be a lot of medical, philosophical and official terminology in German that is formed simply from compounding native vocabulary (although Greek and Latin contributions are still quite significant).

That's mostly true. The caveat is that when it comes to medical terminology, doctors often use a different, more Latin or Greek, terminology among each other than the one they use towards laypeople, or that laypeople use among each other. For instance, people who don't work in dentistry usually use the term Backenzähne as a combined term for molars and premolars; but dentists and their assistants will still talk about Molaren and Prämolaren.

[Linguoboy]

That's mostly true. The caveat is that when it comes to medical terminology, doctors often use a different, more Latin or Greek, terminology among each other than the one they use towards laypeople, or that laypeople use among each other. For instance, people who don't work in dentistry usually use the term Backenzähne as a combined term for molars and premolars; but dentists and their assistants will still talk about Molaren and Prämolaren.

Here in the USA, most dentists and dental technicians seem to prefer the Universal Numbering System and eschew even the Latinate names which I learned in grade school.

I'm sure I've told this story before, but when I was in Germany, I went to the doctor with a malady and was told I might have "Pfeiffersches Drüsenfieber" and should go see a specialist. The specialist diagonosed me with "Mononukleose" and I said to him, "I thought I had Pfeiffersches Drüsenfieber!" He just laughed and told me they were two names for the same thing. ("Drüsenfieber" means something like "gland fever" and Pfeiffer is the surname of the 19th-century Germany pediatrician who described the illness.)

[hwhatting]

I think Russian and perhaps other Slavic languages may have a similar phenomenon where learned words are borrowed from Old Church Slavonic*) forms.

The difference between both is not so big, and a lot of Church Slavonic forms have become part of the everyday vocabulary anyway. You have things like moloko "milk" (inherited Russian = R) vs. mlechny "milky" (CS) in mlechnyj put' "milky way" or gorod "city, town" (R) vs. -grad "suffix for city names" (CS), gorozhanin "city inhabitant" vs. grazhdanin "citizen" (CS), but the deviations between Russian and CS are not much worse than the ablaut, accent, and allomorph variations between native Russian words.
On the other hand, Russian has loaned quite a lot of international Graeco-Latinate, French, and English tems, plus some German terms, especially in the sciences, so that the issue exists there as well; my totally subjective impression is that it's about the same as in German, i.e. there are more native terms than in English, if we count the CS terms as native, but the amount of loan words is still significant.

@linguoboy: Great story But yes, you describe the situation correctly. Concerning dental numbers, that's what dentists and dental hygienists use when sharing data in Germany, too, in my experience.

[Travis B.]

I think Russian and perhaps other Slavic languages may have a similar phenomenon where learned words are borrowed from Old Church Slavonic*) forms.

The difference between both is not so big, and a lot of Church Slavonic forms have become part of the everyday vocabulary anyway. You have things like moloko "milk" (inherited Russian = R) vs. mlechny "milky" (CS) in mlechnyj put' "milky way" or gorod "city, town" (R) vs. -grad "suffix for city names" (CS), gorozhanin "city inhabitant" vs. grazhdanin "citizen" (CS), but the deviations between Russian and CS are not much worse than the ablaut, accent, and allomorph variations between native Russian words.
On the other hand, Russian has loaned quite a lot of international Graeco-Latinate, French, and English tems, plus some German terms, especially in the sciences, so that the issue exists there as well; my totally subjective impression is that it's about the same as in German, i.e. there are more native terms than in English, if we count the CS terms as native, but the amount of loan words is still significant.

@linguoboy: Great story But yes, you describe the situation correctly. Concerning dental numbers, that's what dentists and dental hygienists use when sharing data in Germany, too, in my experience.

You get this even in personal names, e.g. Russian Vladimir is a CS loan, whereas Ukrainian Volodymyr is native East Slavic.

[Moose-tache]

I've always wondered about languages that replace technical vocabulary with nativisms. "Television" is treated as an opaque unit, but do Germans feel that way about "Fernsehen?"

[zompist]

I've always wondered about languages that replace technical vocabulary with nativisms. "Television" is treated as an opaque unit, but do Germans feel that way about "Fernsehen?"

How do you feel about terms like "black hole"? If physicists still learned Greek it would have been called a "melanotrypa."

[Moose-tache]

That's my point. Terms like black hole and big bang just sound like baby-talk. Some of them started out as deliberately stupid-sounding, and caught on because there wasn't a ready alternative. Is that what all scientific words sound like in Mandarin?

[Raphael]

"Television" is treated as an opaque unit, but do Germans feel that way about "Fernsehen?"

Usually not, though I'll note that "fern" is a rather old-fashioned word these days, while "Fernsehen" is still widely used.

[xxx]

scholar words are the quintessence of label words that are known only to a minority of speakers...
in conlanging this is typically what I'm running away from,
and in 3SDeductiveLanguage(1Sound=1Sign=1Sense) all words are their own definition and must be transparent...

[hwhatting]

Usually not, though I'll note that "fern" is a rather old-fashioned word these days, while "Fernsehen" is still widely used.

Interesting that you see it that way.
What I can agree on is that fern is more freguently used in compounds (e.g., as German equivalent to Greek Tele-), than as attribute, predicate or adverb, especially in colloquial language (where one would use weit weg or weit entfernt).

That's my point. Terms like black hole and big bang just sound like baby-talk. Some of them started out as deliberately stupid-sounding, and caught on because there wasn't a ready alternative. Is that what all scientific words sound like in Mandarin?

I don't know about Mandarin, but certainly not in German. I guess such coinings sounding like baby talk to you has a lot to do with English speakers simply not being used to terms being nativised.
In German, nativised words are (1) the normal word, like Fernsehen - nobody even thinks about it; (2) the official word, which doesn't sound like baby talk, but rather hifalutin' (like Kraftfahrzeug "motor vehicle" vs. Auto "car"), (3) failed attempts like Zerknalltreibling for Motor - these simply sound ridiculous or weird, or (4) everyday words which exist besides loans, e.g. Erdkunde vs. Geographie - this last class often has a more popular or homely vibe, but not down to the level of baby talk.

[xxx]

some people like label words rather than transparent words:
the former seem to involve the magic of what is not known to everyone, while the latter are... transparent

these are the two poles that attract all language,
on the one hand it delimits the community that knows it,
on the other a universalism that allows us to communicate with everyone...

[Raphael]

(4) everyday words which exist besides loans, e.g. Erdkunde vs. Geographie - this last class often has a more popular or homely vibe, but not down to the level of baby talk.

As you know, Bob, err, H-W, the subject is called Erdkunde in primary and secondary schools and Geographie in university, leading to the rule that, in order to become a teacher of Erdkunde, you have to study Geographie.

[Arzena]

I've thought for a while that there might be one serious difference between the perception of Germanic languages on the one hand, and some other languages and language groups, such as Chinese, Arabic, or the Romance languages on the other hand, by their own respective speakers.

I'm reminded of my experience living in Morocco. I arrived knowing mostly MSA, which is what I would speak in until I started Darija (Moroccan Arabic) classes and could communicate in Moroccan Arabic. I remember that, upon hearing my mostly MSA speech, people would try to "speak up" to that level. Some people, if they knew MSA well, really enjoyed speaking it to me (and would only speak to me in it!) and showing off their mastery of FusHa vocabulary. Regardless of competency in MSA, there definitely was an air people put on to speak MSA.

[Linguoboy]

That's my point. Terms like black hole and big bang just sound like baby-talk. Some of them started out as deliberately stupid-sounding, and caught on because there wasn't a ready alternative. Is that what all scientific words sound like in Mandarin?

Just because the compounds are transparent doesn't mean there's no lexical bar. Chinese technical vocabulary often uses morphemes which have fallen out of daily use. For instance, the common translation of "vegetarian" is 素食者 sùshízhě where 食 is obsolete outside of compounds like these and -者 is a bound morpheme forming agent nouns. (A more colloquial alternative is 吃素的人 chīsù de rén which can be loosely translated as "vegetable-eating person".)

In general, this is more true of Mandarin than some other varieties (食 is still the common verb for "eat" in Hakka and Yue) but you can find similar examples in all the dialects. The names of elements, for instance, are recent phono-semantic coinages so a term like 氧化劑 yǎnghuàjì "oxidant" doubtless sounds very "sciency" to everyone.

[Nachtswalbe]

Also, Mandarin did a lot of borrowing from Japanese which in turn borrowed from Classical chinese, so 哲学 zhe3xue2 'philosophy' and 科学 ke1xue2 'science' are not easily decomposable into commonly used morphemes