I think that by "can guess fake words" in the title OP means that the tool can come up with a plausible guess for the etymology, even for fake words. Unfortunately, the more common reading of that phrase is that it can tell fake words from real ones
One person inventing a word that they have never heard before doesn't negate the possibility of that word being in common use somewhere.
https://books.google.ca/books/about/Arboreality.html?id=S95Y...
"An expansion of the 2020 Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award winning story. Arboreality is a finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award and the winner of the 2023 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction."
Between things like "verbing" and "nouning", and the cultural acceptance of doing them in casual speech, I'd say English is a great language because you get to "invent" new words on the fly, and your interlocutors know what you mean.
In this sense, even if no one before ever said or wrote "multiarborality", it's pretty clear what it means (as long as you don't misread it), and IMHO it's perfectly fine to derive its etymology by deconstructing it back to "common" words and pulling etymology on those, recursively.
I bet you could do that with most languages. I don’t see why English would be especially great at it.
1. English doesn’t really have an official regulation body, like French does.
2. The lack of cases and complex grammar. Any language with a case system is going to have more complexity when it comes to adding new words, because otherwise you end up with awkward looking constructions.
3. English itself is something of a hybrid between Latin and Germanic languages, which to my knowledge gives it a more diverse ancestry than the typical language. Ergo having a new word of dubious origins is more natural.
1. Doesn’t seem relevant, as we’re discussing making up a word in conversation and not putting it into dictionaries.
3. Especially in this globalised world, English loanwords are everywhere. No one bats an eye at it and plenty of languages distort those words to fit their own language. For example: when referring to an internet post you say you’re “posting”; another language would keep the “post” but replace the “ing” with the modifier appropriate for them.
3. Loanwords are everywhere but I think they are easier to incorporate into everyday speech in English than in some other languages, especially ones with case endings. A word like taco, for example, has become indistinguishable from other “native” English words. Taco in say, Polish, requires more thinking about how it fits into the case system and what endings should be used. It’s a more complicated process than in English.
Still, I want to thank you for the polite and reasoned replies. I wish we were having this conversation in person, I’m confident it would’ve been interesting.
Language is a tool. People will use their language for what they need it for. If there isn't a word they'll make one up or steal it. This is absolutely universal. I know you can dig up any number of texts that say English is special, but they're all wrong.
"Languages differ not in what they can express, but in what they must express" as Roman Jakobson phrased it. (The "must express" refers to grammar - in some languages you need a subject, or to know the time something happened, or in which direction[0] it happened. Other languages don't care, but you can add that information if you need it.)
[0] E.g. Mam, spoken in Guatemala, marks all verbs for direction, even if they're abstract, then you add one based on convention or metaphor or maybe taste.
It is my impression that introducing such ad-hoc words in English is something people wouldn't bat an eye on, while in other languages/cultures I'm familiar with, it'd be something Serious that you probably shouldn't do unless absolutely necessary.
I don't even know what a fake word is.
https://deconstructor.ayush.digital/w/flonkers
"Flonkers: A made-up word, likely humorous". Aren't all words made up? Edit: This one, unlike my previous example, is actually in use - flonkers: an animal that looks fat but is actually just fluffy.
At least it did say "slartibartfast" was a fictional character.