You say that English can be sorted into two registers, but the example you give of a low register doesn't actually exist or get recognized or used, so I'm not sure how that is evidence that there are two registers and not just one.

> It's that English vocabulary can be sorted into these two registers, a common and an academic one, and that this distinction is largely absent in several other European languages.

But the example you give is of English using the same word for common and academic context.

English uses one register for some words, e.g. "coal, handbag" and the othe register for other words, e.g. "carbon", "metabolism".

You're missing the point of "but the example you give of a low register" - English does not use the lower register in that context. It's noticeable by contrast with other languages where that higher register is largely absent, which do use the standard register throughout.

This guy gets it https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24981922 , for what it's worth. If you don't think if it's a significant point, then stop reading.

Of course English doesn't use the low register in this context - which is why I'm wondering why it was provided as an example of English having two registers. And "coal" and "carbon" are not interchangeable besides for register. They just mean different things.

> If you don't think if it's a significant point, then stop reading.

My point is that I either don't understand the point, or the point is wrong. Not that I think it is an insignificant point. And that isn't a very productive way to share messages on a message board.

> Of course English doesn't use the low register in this context - which is why I'm wondering why it was provided as an example of English having two registers

If English "doesn't use the low register in this context", then that implies that there _are_ different registers for different contexts, right?

In English, that is. In Dutch or German or Swedish, there are not.

> And "coal" and "carbon" are not interchangeable.

Um? No one said that they were, and that's not the point in any form. We're talking about formation of (related) words. IDK if this conversation is worthwhile, to be honest. You seem to be actively evading the point.

I never argued that English only uses one register. I argued that you can't point to English having two registers by pointing out a usage of a single register and a non-existent example in another register.

e.g. "There are two ways for offense to score in American football. One is a touchdown. Translating a touchdown into soccer is equivalent of saying the ball is kicked past the goal line, but when you literally reconvert that back to American football, you can't score by kicking the ball across the goal line.". That does not prove that there are two ways to score in football. That proves that there is at least one way to score in football.

> IDK if this conversation is worthwhile, to be honest. You seem to be actively evading the point.

Bizarre coming from someone who just said "stop reading if you don't like it".

I do think I'm missing your point, but it wasn't because I missed your 'unfamiliar' remark so much as it's confusing (how can a manner of speech be universally confusing unless it simply doesn't exist, and presumably you aren't arguing that it doesn't exist while also arguing that it does exist?).

> The point is not that there are different dialects (although there are to an extent, but that's an entirely sperate discussion) It's that English vocabulary can be sorted into these two registers, a common and an academic one, and that this distinction is largely absent in several other European languages.

I don't understand the distinction you're describing in English. You give an example of "coal" and "stuff" and "carbon", but I don't understand why you're arguing that "carbon" belongs to a higher/academic register. Your examples seem to support the inverse of your argument, which is that German (and presumably other languages) has a distinction between a higher and lower register (one could choose between "Carbon" or "Coal-stuff") and English doesn't have this distinction (you must use "carbon" when talking about carbon and "coal" when talking about coal).

> This may be "an altogether different phenomena" to what the author is describing, though that should not stop you buying it. Equivalently, it should not impede your purchase of the concept that English does have some form of "high/low language pairs".

I don't disbelieve the author's premise, but that's not your premise. English doesn't have a single "high dialect" or a single "low dialect", but again, I don't think that's what TFA is talking about with respect to other European languages. Rather, I'm guessing the author is arguing that because Latin was the written language for continental Europe, and because the scribal class was markedly different than the illiterate masses, there was a considerable divergence between formal/written Latin and vulgar Latin which was persisted as vulgar Latin became the Romance languages--indeed, this division has deep historical roots into Latin itself (scribal/educated Latin was different than spoken Latin) and perhaps even earlier. On the other hand, in England, that educated Latin tradition never took root--the English vernacular quickly became the language of literacy hundreds of years before written French, Spanish, Italian etc came into existence (continental scribes were clinging to written Latin). Again, I'm not sure if that's what the author is driving at, but it seems that way to me.

> I don't understand the distinction you're describing in English. You give an example of "coal" and "stuff" and "carbon", but I don't understand why you're arguing that "carbon" belongs to a higher/academic register. Your examples seem to support the inverse of your argument, which is that German (and presumably other languages) has a distinction between a higher and lower register (one could choose between "Carbon" or "Coal-stuff") and English doesn't have this distinction (you must use "carbon" when talking about carbon and "coal" when talking about coal).

Not the OP, but - in German and other similar languages, there is no equivalent to "carbon" as a term with a separate etymology. The word for carbon is "coalstuff" - it is the thing which coal is made out of. Similarly, oxygen is "acidstuff" - because it was originally believed to be the cause of chemical acidity.

If English had developed as other Germanic languages did, it would also use these kinds of terms for the elements, as well as in other parts of science, academia, and formal speech. Compound terms, which form a large part of common language (e.g. motor-way, hand-bag, table-cloth) would also be used in technical, political, and legal language.

Instead, the "high" part of English is derived from Latin and Greek. The English call it science, rather than "nature-wit-making", because of the use of Latin among early academics meant they already had the word "scientia" instead. Nobody felt the need to apply Germanic-style compounds in a realm where all the vocabulary already existed.

This results in two registers in modern English - that for words which are used in common speech, which are distinctly Germanic-sounding, and use lots of compounds; and that for words which come from academic, scientific, or political speech, which are Latin- and Greek-sounding, and largely lack compounds.

English speakers can mostly automatically use these registers to affect their communication: you can easily make something sound pompous with a lot of high-register Latin-based terminology, or alternatively make it sound plain and common with low-register Germanic compounds.

That clarifies the argument, but I'm still not sure I buy it. I do agree that there are words that convey more pomp and that those words tend to be derived from Latin and Greek (typically by way of French), but I don't know that the distribution is particularly bimodal. Off the cuff, I would think it's more likely that "pomp" of a word is derived from its distance from the core of the lexicon, because these rarer words indicate more education. The core of English is based on Old English and Old Norse, so naturally there are a lot of these words that seem pedestrian, but on the other extreme there are other words very recently borrowed into English (and thus at the periphery of our lexicon) that tend to convey a lot of pomp--typically these are from Latin or French or Greek, but sometimes even from other Germanic languages (e.g., schadenfreude, hygge, etc). To restate my point, the distribution appears gradual rather than bimodal.