English is rightfully considered international. In many countries of the world, it is vital and increases the chances of career advancement. This article will answer the question of how many words are in the English language and how many you need to know for fluency in the language.
The Importance of Vocabulary in Language Learning
In the process of mastering any language, including English, much attention is paid to the study of vocabulary. Improving their level of knowledge, many people usually try to increase their vocabulary in order to communicate better and more freely. Then, competently connecting the right words, using certain rules, a person can speak English, as well as understand the language by ear and, accordingly, read books and texts. However, many are wondering how many words in English, as well as how much should be learned in order to fully speak. What do linguists think about this?
How many wordsin English?
This is a rather tricky question, since there is no standard and universal system for counting vocabulary. Some experts believe that only words should be taken into account, not taking into account their word forms. And someone, on the contrary, takes into account everything together, counting slang words, terminology, technical vocabulary. There are certain organizations that provide information regarding vocabulary and try to answer the question of how many words there are in the English language.
In the United States of America, in the state of Texas, there is a company "Global Langwidge Monitor", which studies and records the distribution of English words. The company began its activity more than ten years ago, gradually becoming an authoritative in the field of philology.
Scientists of this company count words that are listed in respected and authoritative dictionaries (Oxfod, Webster), new terms in various media, scientific and technological literature, Internet blogs, websites are also taken into account. How many words are there in the English language at the moment? According to this company, there are now more than one and a half million words. English crossed the millionth milestone on June 10, 2007, when another new lexical unit was recorded by this organization. The activity of Global Langwidge Monitor is unique in its kind. The data of this influential company is used by many researchers and linguists.
Authoritative Oxfordthe dictionary contains approximately 500,000 words. The same number of English terms and slang words are not included in this dictionary due to its conservatism. Thus, answering the question about how many words there are in English, we can say: from half a million to one and a half million, depending on the method of counting.
How to get new word status
Now we know the answer to the question of how many words there are in the English language. By the way, in order to get into modern dictionaries and get the title of a new lexical unit, a word has to initially appear in the media and social networks at least twenty-five thousand times. That is, it is not easy enough, but it is worth it - adding the language of Shakespeare and Agatha Christie to the vocabulary.
In fact, it is very interesting how the English language borrows words from various foreign languages so confidently and simply (more than 60 percent of the lexical composition is borrowed), as well as how easily it creates them on its own. According to statistics, a new term in English is born every 96 minutes (13 words per day).
How many words to communicate
There are already more than a million words. Obviously, it is impossible to know them all. How to calculate how many words are in spoken English? According to philologists, it is enough for an ordinary person to know the 1500 most frequently used words in order to communicate in everyday life. They should give almost 100% ability to maintain normal conversational speech. Speaking of reading in English, forunderstanding of texts and books requires another figure - 3500-5000. For good writing, it is desirable to know about ten thousand words. In general, the active vocabulary of an educated Englishman is approximately 10 to 18 thousand lexical units.
There are many more words in the passive vocabulary. The figure of seventy thousand makes a person a "linguistic genius." In any case, it is necessary not only to increase the number of words, but also to do it in a qualitative way. In this case, the principle of “less is more” will work.
How many words are there in Russian
The most respected Russian edition, by which it is possible to judge the richness of the language, is the Big Academic Dictionary, which was compiled by the best philologists of Russia. It contains more than one hundred and thirty thousand words of the Russian classical language. Now philologists are working on a new edition of this book, which will contain about one hundred and fifty thousand words. Dictionary of V. I. Dahl, which was compiled before the revolution, contains more than two hundred thousand words.
According to the estimates of professional linguists, if we add various dialect expressions, then there are already more than four hundred thousand lexical units. If we also take into account technical and medical terms, informal expressions, then the number of words will exceed half a million.
New trends in the language
Language is a living organism. Some words "disappear", come out of the live speech of the speakers completely. But they are being replaced by new ones. For example, from the endFrom the 20th to the beginning of the 21st century, our native language was enriched by at least forty words with only one root “love”: “book lover”, “lover of nature”, “monogamous” and others. Another striking example: the once popular word of French origin "price list" was gradually replaced by the English "price list", and the word "make-up" is gradually giving way to the fashionable term "make-up".
New trends introduce new terms into our speech, which are formed either on the basis of existing words and phrases, or by using borrowed words: “post”, “smiley”, “ok”, “like”. Of course, no philologist can say for sure how many words there are in English and Russian. It all depends on the method of counting.
