Thread: And these people say we have too many words

I remember several people here (e.g. Dogboy) complained the supposed "abundance" of Russian vocabulary. As for me, I always thought it was English that was to be accused of this fault. Only the problem is that in 99,9% people use words like "get, set, have, go" that may mean everything, but 3-4 people among 1000 sometimes use words like "evict" or "epitomize", wich another 997 out of 1000 even don't know to exist. Not very long time ago I already discussed all these "foals, colts" etc. Now I have another set of words:

bog, swamp, fen, marsh, morass, quagmire, mire, slough, slew

Compare this with Russian

болото, топь, трясина.

Exept, the only words anyone would ever say is swamp or marsh. (Maybe mire, but probly in britain). Bog is usually used in stories. No one would say "look at the bog".

the best word to just use would be swamp. its' most popular / widely used.


Though, i can think of some diffrences between these words, they are all pretty much the same.


Quigmire- or however u spell it... is used when a person is in trouble.
Like, Bush is in a quigmire with iraq.

marsh / swamp- pretty much the same. Nasty water with nasty things in it.

Bog- sounds more thick and nasty than a swamp

mire- is like a swamp but you cant see it. someone might fall into a mire and drown becuase the ground looked solid.

morass- never even heard of it.

Slew- again, a word wich means diffrent things. A slew can be a mix of anything. "the party was just a drunken slew of beer and coke". or "the roads are a slew of ice and snow"

slough- sounds again, thicker than a swamp or marsh... hard to walk through, mud like wet cement.

From my californian experience they usually mean the following:

1) swamp - болото в русском смысле
2) marsh - обычно встречатеся в контексте как saltwater marsh или tidal marsh, т.е. непресноводное болото, м.б. связанное с океаном или озером с большой соленостью воды ( e.g. Mono Lake ). Обычно тростники и трава в вязкой, вонючей грязи.
3) slough - полувысохшее русло сильно заиленного ручья, вязкая грязь

bog, fen, morass, quagmire, mire, slew - никогда не встречал

I agree with Propp. I tend to think that English is one of the best languages for literature (maybe not poetry.. hmm) because of this effect. But has any real research been done on these questions? I feel sure it has.

bog, swamp, fen, marsh, morass, quagmire, mire, slough, slew

I would use them in the following ways:

for a physical thing, I would use:
swamp, marsh
and bog and fen are terms that I have heard and used (e.g. Ireland has bogs) but I don't know the proper geographical/scientific definition.
I also use bog to mean toilet

Words like morass and quagmire are most often used in analogies nowadays. For example, Iraq has become a quagmire. A morass of details. Again, I don't know the proper scientific definitions, but both of these are in fairly common usage, especially the first. The word 'mire' is most often used as a verb nowadays. If you are mired, then you are stuck deep in something difficult, and perhaps a little lost. That's how I understand it anyway, I guess you can look it up in a dictionary if you really want.

slough : always reminds me of 'slough of despond'
It means like 'depression' in the physical sense (like trough? strange but yes I think so) .. I believe it's pronounced 'sluf' but I actually don't know! The 'ough' ending is the worst in English, it has 5 different pronunciations.

Completely confusing is the fact that there's a town called Slough in England, about which John Betjemen, the Poet Laureate at one time, wrote a scathing poem. But in that case, 'Slough' rhymes with .. well, you can see

Originally Posted by John Betjemen

Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough
It isn't fit for humans now
There isn't grass to graze a cow
Swarm over, Death!
...

I only use 'slew' to mean 'a large number of', there is obviously another meaning here but I've never heard it.

Originally Posted by waxwing

slough : always reminds me of 'slough of despond'
It means like 'depression' in the physical sense (like trough? strange but yes I think so) .. I believe it's pronounced 'sluf' but I actually don't know! The 'ough' ending is the worst in English, it has 5 different pronunciations.

It's pronounced 'slow' (to rhyme with 'how'); slough pronounced 'sluff' has a thoroughly disgusting meaning all of its own - dead skin and tissue, I believe.

Thanks for that. That means that the 'slough of despond' jokes sounds right Did you look it up in any dictionaries, or were you just working from memory? I only ask because I just looked it up online (dictionary.com) and offline (only an Oxford Advanced Learner's not the Concise sadly), so to speak, and was appalled to discover that:

1. dictionary.com yields an astonishing 18 entries for slough!
2. The Americans pronounce it as 'sloo'
3. They consider 'slew' as an acceptable alternative spelling for 'slough'.
4. slew is also past simple of 'slay'. Of course. Forgot that.

[about the 5 different pronunciations, now I'm thinking there are even 7


cough like 'off'
rough like 'uff'
bough like 'ow' in 'now'
through like 'ew' in 'threw'
hiccough like 'up' (this is a BrE spelling)
thought like 'or'
though like 'oh!' (exclamation)
]
All the more reason to start speaking Russian so I can stop speaking this stupid language

I thought you'd pronounce "slough" as you do "though." But I'm not very interested in quagmires and bogs.

Originally Posted by Propp

bog, swamp, fen, marsh, morass, quagmire, mire, slough, slew

Fast 125 trains out of London Paddington used to stop at:

Slough / Reading / Didcot / Swindon / Bristol Temple Meads .......

Originally Posted by in this case, as joysof

It's pronounced 'slow' (to rhyme with 'how')

"I can't come to the football match this afternoon. I'm bogged down with homework. I'll be in the mire if I don't get it finished before Monday. Actually I'm swamped with homework, I've also got to finish this terms project and I've got a morass of data to sort through".

Means - "I can't come to the football match this afternoon. I've got a lot of homework. I'll be in trouble if I don't get it finished before Monday. Actually I'm inundated with homework, I've also got to finish this terms project and I've got a lot of data to sort through".

Liked your composition Mike
125s? Oh I always used to take the glorious Thames Trains line during the mid 90s when I was living in Maidenhead; the line whizzes you out of London to Oxford, stopping at Slough, Maidenhead, Reading and other suicide-inducing places such as Didcot Parkway, if I remember correctly.

Originally Posted by John Betjemen

...
But spare the bald young clerks who add
The profits of the stinking cad;
It's not their fault that they are mad,
They've tasted Hell.

It's not their fault they do not know
The birdsong from the radio,
It's not their fault they often go
To Maidenhead

And talk of sport and makes of cars
In various bogus-Tudor bars
And daren't look up and see the stars
But belch instead.
...

Originally Posted by Dogboy182

morass- never even heard of it.

It's what you get when you eat too much Halloween candy.

It was exactly "morass" that was a final blow for me. I knew "swamp", I knew "bog", "marsh" and "mire". But then I started coming across "quagmire", "fen" and "slew" (as an American usage). When I saw the word "morass" in "The Island of dr. Moreau" I thought it was more than enough... Then I took a dictionary and found "slough".

Originally Posted by Propp

Now I have another set of words:

bog, swamp, fen, marsh, morass, quagmire, mire, slough, slew

Compare this with Russian

болото, топь, трясина.

There's also гать, маево, купань (купан), вязь (вязище), сыза, сасы, калуга (in parts of the Volga region!!!), едма - they all mean different kinds of bogs, swamps, mires, etc. in different parts of Russia - and those are just the ones I know, I'm sure there'll be plenty more if we turn to local dialects. How does that compare indeed.

I only agree with "гать", more or less, and only if it really means "swamp" somewhere and not "a log-path through swamps". Other are dialectal and absolutely out of scope of the literary language, whereas all those metioned English words are from literary language and are included even in concise dictionaries.[/i]

Originally Posted by Propp

I only agree with "гать", more or less, and only if it really means "swamp" somewhere and not "a log-path through swamps". Other are dialectal and absolutely out of scope of the literary language, whereas all those metioned English words are from literary language and are included even in concise dictionaries.[/i]

Well, I'm afraid I'm forced to disagree - the English words too are restricted in their usage, at least that's what I was told when I was visiting England - for example, people would normally only talk about fens in Norfolk/Lincolnshire rather than, say, Devon, and the word 'bog' would be associated with Ireland in most cases (unless it's used to mean 'toilet'), in other words it's pertty much the same story as in Russian. New chaw, syel?

Originally Posted by Propp

I only agree with "гать", more or less, and only if it really means "swamp" somewhere and not "a log-path through swamps".

That's called "дрябза" (not sure about the spelling though) at least where I come from and гать is a midle-sized swamp akin to ровжа or ковыдло, I've never heard anyone call a path through a swamp гать.

I remember several people here (e.g. Dogboy) complained the supposed "abundance" of Russian vocabulary. As for me, I always thought it was English that was to be accused of this fault. Only the problem is that in 99,9% people use words like "get, set, have, go" that may mean everything

The only part of learning English that would be uniquely difficult is if the person was trying to be a writer or teacher or some other profession in which a vast vocabulary is necessary. Otherwise, as far as communication, I think people would be fine as long as they knew just a couple, like swamp and marsh. There are quite a few native speakers who don't know what a quagmire or slough is, and even if they do, it would seem awkward to use it in everyday conversation. ((that doesn't mean I don't appreciate and admire a well-rounded vocabulary; but it isn't completely necessary))

A good part about English though is that even when the word changes cases, it stays the same:

I am smacking the peacock. (accusative)

The peacock is smacking me. (nominative)

I am feeding you to the peacock. (dative)


At least a peacock is always a peacock

Yeah, no declinations etc.I like languages like that.My name is never Bretishka or whatever.
I've always been critical of English's practically.But, for poetry and literature, I think English is amazing.Some languages are easier to rhyme words, but you don't need to be creative about it as you would in English.
As for the word 'bog'.I think it's main usage is as a verb."We're bogged in"."Don't press the accelerator, you'll bog us in".But, I think the previous poster was right- different countries/regions=different word.
As for the pronounciation of the word 'slough'.I've said this before, as it's a peeve of mine.The English language is the only language in the world that would use a four letter diphthong yet still not tell you EXACTLY how to pronounce the word.For a non-native speaker, knowing which pronunciation to use must feel like this emoticon .The 'ough' has got to be fixed.It's the biggest joke in the world of linguistics I've ever come across.There's at least 4 common ways to pronounce that diphthong.As in; rough (where did the 'f' sound come from) , bough, though, thought, through.And that's just the commonest ones.We should either adapt the gaelic pronunciation of these words (I assume they were once upon a time pronounced in the throat), or change the spelling.
..uh..uh..uh.O.K, I'm calm now.(And, I'll try not to get too trigger happy with those 'intense' emoticons in future.They're very alluring and addictive .I just had to try them out).

If you think having three billion words that mean the same thing is bad, try having one word that means three billion things(Mandarin Chinese).

If you think having three billion words that mean the same thing is bad, try having one word that means three billion things(Mandarin Chinese).

Yeah I've heard those types of languages are pretty difficult...I think it's Vietnamese that was official named the hardest language in the world to learn...I know what you mean though, for example in Latin there are approximately 3 billion meanings for the word "rem" (ok not 3 billion but who's counting) It can mean thing, it, those, that, paper, book, sky - pretty much any object. I guess the trick is to know what context it's in

Originally Posted by brett

My name is never Bretishka or whatever.

Bretishka - sounds nice brett, don't you think you lose a lot that nobody calls you so tenderly?