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Reducing word count is rather useless if you end up with words that are much longer.

The distinction of what a word is, is also pretty interesting to think about. When I read some old Dutch stories back in high school, I noticed the writers would glue together words that I would consider to be completely separate. The Latin word "quodsi" from the second answer is obviously a combination of "quod" and "si", two separate words, but "nimium saepe" isn't combined into "nimiumsaepe" despite Cicero often using those words together. "valedīxit" is just "vale" and "dīxit" smashed together into a single verb.

The proposed "illa nimium valedīxit" (from combining both answers, to include the stressed gender of the person in question) can be interpreted literally as "she overly goodbyesaid". You can derive the same meaning from reordering the words, but it won't sound as poetic.

I don't think English or French are more exacting and clear per se, I think that's more of a cultural thing for native speakers. Compare posh British English speakers to American English speakers; the exact same words can be used to either say something directly ("very interesting") or to hide complete disagreement behind a nice expression ("very interesting").

I wouldn't consider French to be any better or worse than English. It's just another language. Though, with the exception of the useless ^ here and there to indicate a missing s, French spelling matches pronunciation a lot better at least.



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