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this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2023
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The vocabulary of a language is like the fur of a beast: sure, it's highly visible, but what's inside (the grammar, or the beast itself) matters more.
I get the analogy but don't agree with the reasoning. Or maybe it depends on the circumstance. But for foreign languages I would suggest it's the other way round: The fur (grammar/prononciation) might look (sound) nice, but it's the vocabulary that bring the actual meaning to whatever you say.
The circumstances when I use this analogy are mostly language evolution, borrowings, and their overall impact on a language. I'll use two English example sentences to demonstrate this:
Which one of those sentences is recognisably English? It's the first one because, while it's full of borrowings*, it still abides to the morphological and syntactical rules of the language. In the meantime, the second sentence is rubbish, even if it uses well-established native vocab - because it doesn't abide to English syntax and morphology.
Or, by the analogy: the first sentence might've changed the fur of the beast, but the beast inside is still the same. The second one plopped that beast's fur over something else, but the beast isn't there any more.
(The "pronunciation" / phonology is a third can of worms. It doesn't work well with the fur vs. beast analogy.)
*"adore" from French, "their" from Old Norse, "potato" from Taino, "jerky" from Quechua, "amigo" from Spanish. Only "I" and "with" are native.
Nice example for borrowings! I was thinking about this in the context of learning a new language.
Imho schools put way too much emphasis on the grammar vs the vocabulary. At least that's what I experienced in three different countries, where you would learn 4 different past tenses but not be able to use any of it because you're missing the vocabulary.
Being able to say "Where restaurant/hospital/train station?" is much more helpful than being able to just say "Where is the restaurant?". So I guess my argument applies to learning new languages, where I think vocabulary is the more decisive factor but I agree that in it's essence a languages grammar counts more.
For language learning I agree with you 100% - vocab is generally more useful than grammar. And I also wish that schools put more emphasis on vocab - or at least demanded it more from the students, as vocab learning often boils down to memorisation.