Short words and lack of context

[creamyhorror]

There are tons of English words that are hardly heard in the spoken language, especially in colloquial and non-academic situations. All sorts of jargon and less common words fall into this category. Randomly: revelatory, abrogate, denigrate, supine, asphyxiate... (And I think furthermore and however are common enough in my circles; thus and therefore a little less so.)

That said, I do think Chinese writing uses a broader range of words than English writing. We discussed this when comparing the Zipf curves of word frequency in Chinese and English.

Words in Chinese are often bisyllabic while English has many words with 3 or more syllables; furthermore, the number of allowed syllables in Chinese is significantly less than in English. Both factors work to reduce the overall 'sound-space' that Chinese words can occupy. Add to that the broader range of words used in Chinese, and it does seem reasonable to say that Chinese will tend to have more namespace ('soundspace') collisions.

These collisions, or ambiguities, are mostly resolvable through context, I'd guess. Hey, on the bright side, it's pretty easy to pun!

[L-F-J]

Do people actually say "however" out loud? Or "furthermore" or "therefore"? "Thus"? "Henceforth"?

Yes, but often in more formal settings. In everyday speech, it probably depends largely on the speaker's education. These words sound awkward when intermixed with less sophisticated vocabulary where "but", "and", and "so" would be more suitable.