Vocabulary

A game of Scrabble

The Vocabulary is the collection of words in a language.

Size & Origin

In English there are estimated to be roughly 1,000,000 words in the language; this is a huge increase on the 50,000 words available in Old English. These words are generally derived from one of several main sources:

• Germanic (including Old English and Old Norse, back through Proto-Indo-European) for common pronouns, basic family relationships, common animals and verbs
• Latin for more formal and scientific words which are regarded as more educated
• French (which is itself derived from Latin) for legal and other terms
• Greek for medical and political terms

The reason for the large numbers of words in the vocabulary is partly due to the ability of English to easily import new words. Thus there are approximate synonyms such as come or arrive the former from a Germanic origin, the latter from a Latin origin. However, they are not exact synonyms as they offer a subtle difference in meaning and flavour.

Of the most common words in English, almost all are Germanic in origin.

Personal Vocabulary

Part of the problem in assessing how many words there are in a language and how many an individual knows is the differing opinions of what constitutes a word.

Is, for example, the verb walk the same as the noun walk? Is the verb walk the same as walks or walking or walked?

Looking at personal vocabulary it is estimated that

• Shakespeare had a vocabulary of between 18,000 - 25,000 words
• A good college graduate has a vocabulary of 40,000 words
• A school leaver will have roughly 16,000 words
• The average vocabulary is 20,000 words

Interestingly, however, although the average vocabulary is 20,000 words, most people use about 2,000 words for 90% of the time (especially in spoken communication).

For learners

• Beginner: < 2,000
• Intermediate: ~ 5,000
• Advanced: ~ 10,000

Determining Word Frequency (a list of words ranked according to popularity of use) is usually achieved by counting words in a corpus. The difficulty here is that depending on which corpus is used the word list varies.

Active vs Passive Vocabulary

Active vocabulary comprises the words which a person uses regulary in their everyday speech or writing. Typically, however, they will have a much larger Passive vocabulary. These are words which a person may understand but which they will not use when speaking or writing. It is common, in addition, for written vocabulary is larger than spoken vocabulary.

For example, a native speaker will likely be able to read and understand:

However, when asked to say what they have read, a person may well paraphrase it as:

Divisions

As well as the vocabulary being divided grammatical into Parts of Speech, there are major divisions which can be made within the vocabulary itself:

• basic words (see above, about 2,000 words take care of most of our needs)
• slang
• jargon
• technical or scientific words

See Also

A Word A Day - daily email with vocabulary

Vocabulary Master - freeware vocabulary testing program

Vocabulary Activities - different activities to practice vocabulary

External Links

Wordnik - an online dictionary with modern usage, etymology, pronunciation, etc