This is the sentence that I uttered in 1999 and seriously offended my Canadian boyfriend with. (Fortunately, we managed to clarify the misunderstanding and we are still married, living happily with two children.) That argument started when he casually mentioned during a conversation "I don't know that word, but I can look it up in a dictionary..." It was my first time in a native-speaker environment and I was looking up to him like he was an English speaking god. During my time in New York that summer I was improving my English skills in an amazing speed, expanded my vocabulary, refined my grammar skills, polished up syntax on a daily basis, and he was my teacher, example, model for all this - and he is telling me there are words he doesn't know and he needs to look up? In a dictionary? But...but he is...English!
To understand my disbelief, I have to explain where I am coming from.
In my country, Hungary it's basically unheard of to own a monolingual dictionary that everyday people would look up words in. It's not because all Hungarians are that smart, or that educated. There is a much simpler reason for it. In Hungary in the early 19th century there was a movement led by linguists and writers called “Language Revitalization”. At that time the Hungarian language was used only by the uneducated masses, and if someone was learning science, law, or medicine, or wanted to became a politician, they had to communicate in German or Latin, because the medieval Hungarian language was not suitable, or even capable of providing the vocabulary. We didn’t have Hungarian words for simple terms like train, decoration, victory, season, wave or potato. This group of scholars recognized the increasing demand to be able to study, read and write literature, do business, go to court and simply manage everyday life's challenges in their mother tongue. They decided to "upgrade" the Hungarian language.
The writers created more than 10,000 new Hungarian words, by direct translation from other languages, simplification, using suffixes, adaptation of words from dialects, or descriptive creation. In the 21st century we still use most of these words. And because most of our words are truly Hungarian with Hungarian roots, we have very few words that even a five-year-old would not be able to understand (unless it’s in academic writing, where it’s common to use Latin or Greek words).
For example, when an average English speaker reads the word ‘magnanimous’, they might need to look it up. The Hungarian language reformers broke it apart, translated it and turned into a Hungarian word: nagylelkű, (=”big-souled”); the direct translation of the Latin magna=big, anima=soul.
For us, a computer is számítógép (=“counting machine”), conundrum is rejtély (=“hiddenness”), apathy is fásultság (=“wood-being-ness”), ambiguous is kétértelmű (=“with two meanings”), continent is földrész ("earth-part") and so on. (I chose some of these words from a list of "most looked-up English words", which shows that a lot of native-speakers would not know them or would not be able to use them without a quick check.)
When a language, like English starts to use a foreign word, it's called a borrowed word, or a loanword. Sometimes it still feels foreign (bona fide, Schadenfreude, deja vu), but sometimes it adapts it to the point that it feels like it's part of that language (spaghetti, circus, magazine).
When I was learning English, I didn't realize that the English vocabulary was full of words with Greek and Latin roots, words that derived from French, Norse and German: words that often challenge the common reader. That's why I assumed that while I have to look up words, because I am a foreigner, English speakers don't, because it's their mother tongue after all!
I love this look at English from a non-native speaker. English is my first language and the idea that you never really had to look up what words meant is a little baffling to me. I have always had a dictionary in my room to look up words that stumped me in my reading or homework. As I grew up, I realized that this is because the English language has 'borrowed' quite a few words for a large variety of cultures and languages. Thanks for showing me a different persepective.
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