Your Native English Teacher's thought of the day:
I came across some interesting facts today that I thought I would share with you.
-The average native speaker of any language uses around a tenth of his vocabulary in everyday speech. In other words, around 1200 to 2000 words.
-A person needs a vocabulary of about 1500 to 2000 words to communicate well in most circumstances.
-The longest word in popular usage is ANTIDISESTABLISHMENTARIANISM (a movement opposed to the separation of church and state) at 28 letters.
(I'm not convinced that this word actually falls under the 'popular usage' category!)
-How many words does the average native speaker use? This depends on the speakers level of education, background etc. but somewhere between 12,000 and 20,000. Shakespeare used more than 30,000 words in his works!
-English has more words than most comparable world languages.
-How many words are in the English language? This is an impossible question to answer! It really depends on what words you want to count. But there are, at the very least, a quarter of a million distinct English words, excluding inflections, and words from technical and regional vocabulary. The unabridged Oxford English Dictionary has about 600,000.
1 comments:
Hi Maria, you do have some very interesting facts on your blog; oh, and the jokes are fabulous! On the subject of no. of words an average person knows, well, i wouldn't say Shakespeare used MORE THAN 30,000 words--rather--i would say ONLY OVER 30,000 words! That figure is far far less considering the greatness and richness of his work. Please note that. This fact brings home the point that greatness of a piece of literature depends more on creativity and imagination than great no. of words.
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