How many words are in the English language, and how many does the average English speaker use?

kerry8888

the largest english dictionary contains about 290,000 words. this however doesnt really answer the question as there are more than 600,000 word forms as well as a great deal of slang that is fast becoming acceptable and used in the mainstream. apparently english, unlike some other languages does not have hard and fast rules that define what is or isnt a word. about 200,000 words are in common use today and an educated person would have a vocabulary of about 20,000 words. they would use about 2000 different words in a week. of course this can vary widely - but would you believe someone has taken the time to work this out!!! http://www.wordorigins.org/number.htm May 02 03, 4:08 PM

mochyn

little bit short on the old english words there Kerry,at last count there are well over a million,I only know 250 http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2001/JohnnyLing.shtml May 02 03, 4:19 PM

kerry8888

well i have to come clean mochyn - i didnt actually know the answer myself - just got it from a bit of a google.....they must have been talking about aussie english - you know we dont have much of a grasp of the queesns english down here..... May 02 03, 4:22 PM