What do you mean by "deep" here? Because to me, the amount of nuance that "redundancy" gives English seems like a ton of depth.
lol r u srs tho? u k wot i ,mean.
I also wonder if Japanese really has fewer synonyms than usual. People have a tendency towards romanticizing other languages inaccurately - I just learned that the "Eskimos have tons of different words for snow" thing is a misunderstanding, for example.
It's often said that eskimos have fifty words for snow.
This is not true.
It's also said that dwarfs have two hundred words for rock.
The don't. They have no words for rock, in the same way that fish have no words for water. They do have words for igneous rock, sedimentary rock, metamorphic rock, rock underfoot, rock dropping on your helmet from above, and rock which looked interesting and which they could've sworn they left here yesterday. But what they don't have is a word meaning 'rock'. Show a dwarf a rock and he sees, for example, an inferior piece of crystalline sulphite of barytes.
Heh- reminded me of this.
However, what do you say is the 'usual' amount of synonyms?
Am I actually severely mistaken in thinking that English has more than Russian, Spanish and/or German?
I mean, German has a lot of handy words which English has either bastardized or romanticized in turn (Schadenfreude anyone)
Because it's so hard to say 'Cathartic Sadism'.
But as mentioned above, I feel like (Likely erroneously, but hey) English does actually have the greater share of 'redundant terms'.
Probably not idioms though. Japanese for one has a fuckton of idioms.