What is the reason for the smaller vocabulary in the Chinese language compared to languages like German or English?

It isn’t. Let’s play a numbers game. For every synonym I can think of each language gets one point.

“Die”

English:

  1. die
  2. pass away
  3. left us
  4. snuff it
  5. decreased
  6. it is no more
  7. shuffled off this mortal coil
  8. gone to join the choir invisible
  9. e’d be pushing up the daisys
  10. ‘es metabolic processes are now ‘istory
  11. E’s off the twig
  12. e,s kicked the bucket

Chinese:

  1. 逝世
  2. 離世
  3. 歸西
  4. 斃 (somewhat archaic and niche)

English 12 Chinese 17

“Masterbate”

English:

  1. masterbate
  2. beat meat
  3. wank

Chinese:

  1. 自瀆
  2. 自淫
  3. 手淫
  4. 打手槍

English 3 Chinese 4

German is more of an interesting one. Most “scary” long words are actually compound nouns made up of basic shorter nouns, exactly like how Chinese nouns are also formed. I quite like German and write on German quora for fun occasionally.

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