How many words are there in English. How many words in English do you need to know? How many words are there in English and how many do you need to know to communicate

Speaking roughly - for example, "web" in modern English means "web" and "Internet". At the same time, there is also an abbreviation word "internet"; therefore, many (especially Russian) academicians do not consider "web" as two words. Although at the same time they may well denote "ball", "ball", "ball" and other case derivatives, as unique words, each of which adds +1 to the "counter" of the Great and Mighty.

And the same Chinese generally has no words in the traditional sense for us, they have ideograms. Hieroglyphs change their meaning depending on their mutual location, forming new lexemes. The system is so complex that even the name on the passport can be written in several different ways. And if you try to parse it into "words" at the same time, a name that is quite standard for us can mean "the electric ass of the dragon of the heavenly mountains" or "a chest of unwashed sticks of omnipotence." For this reason, by the way, auto-translators from Chinese give out such crap - on Ali, in particular. This is the language of contexts, and if one succeeds in translating from it into European languages without loss of meaning, then it is not possible to decompose it into a certain number of words due to the absence of this concept in the structure of the language.

So, all these discrepancies in attempts to "compare" even such close (on a planetary scale) Russian and English, or French and Spanish there, lead to the fact that in different sources (quite authoritative) the number of words in a language can differ significantly and even in order. So the topic is controversial and controversial, because. everyone looks from their bell tower and counts differently.

Just accept that this is one of the few scientific questions, any answer to which will be someone's ridiculous propaganda or, more likely, just a mistake.

The exact number, of course, is impossible to name for a number of reasons. But approximate data by linguists have long been summarized and analyzed. I will write about the two languages with which I work the most.

English. Most linguists agree that there are approximately 1 million words in the language of Shakespeare and Dickens. Depending on how exactly and what exactly to count, the approximate error is "up to a quarter of a million." Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged contains 470,000 entries (not words, please note). The Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition is about the same.

Russian language. Ozhegov's dictionary contains more than 70,000 words. Ushakov's dictionary contains more than 90,000 words. BTS contains approximately 130,000 words. These figures cover, according to , approximately 50% of all words recorded in the large dictionary card index (BSC) of the Institute for Linguistic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences (OR RAS). This allows, again, approximately, to estimate the total number.

Every year the number of words in the English language is growing: 14.7 lexical units appear per day. Since the time of Shakespeare, who used an average of 20,000 words in his works, much has changed in the English language. Some words are practically not used today, but few people know about the newly appeared ones.

It is quite difficult to accurately answer the question about the number of words in the English language, because this number is constantly growing. Since ten years ago, the number in 500 000 words for learners of English seemed an ominous figure, but now students react more easily to growing numbers, realizing that it will not be possible to cover all the words, and why.

The main fixative of vocabulary in English is " Global Language Monitor”(GLM), the same organization records every new word that appears in magazines and newspapers, scientific and fiction, as well as on the Internet, namely in social networks, blogs, podcasts.

And if you are still impatient to find out the number of words, then according to the " GLM» as of January 1, 2016, there were 1 035 877 .

What a surprise it was that the top word of 2015 was “ microaggression”, and the most popular expression is “ migrant crisis". Why exactly these words became popular, I think everyone understands. “ Microaggression"- a scientific term that has occupied all European and American tabloids, but " migrant crisis” is an expression describing the movement of more than a million refugees from the Middle East (mainly from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan), as well as from North Africa to Europe. This migration is the largest since World War II.

The year 2014 was characterized by completely different words and expressions, and the vector of words did not even closely relate to political events in the world. Word " emoji"captured the hearts of millions of people on the planet, so today even the little ones know what it is (if you are no longer a little one, but still don't know what it's about, then we suggest - an ideogram, emoticon or smile).

The English language continues to march confidently across the planet, allowing words to penetrate deeper and deeper into every field of activity and into world consciousness. So, the expression climate change”, used with the ending “ing”, indicates a continuous change in climate. Far from a new word refugee” – refugee, sounds more and more often again, describing migrants who were forced to leave their homes because of the war.

“content” is a buzzword denoting information, material. The popular words of 2015 also included “ affluenza” – combination “ affluence” + “influenza” = affluence + influenza, which actually refers to healthy wealthy people who are overcome by lack of motivation, guilt and feelings of isolation. ” Opioids“In the US, far more people die from opioid painkillers and heroin than from cars and gun violence.

Among the common expressions of 2015, there is also “ digital darkness” (digital darkness) is what can happen if we stop accessing digital information, so keep paper copies of your favorite photos just in case.

How do words become popular?

In order to be included in the GLM list, a word must meet certain requirements:

Depth determined by appearance in various forms in the media, latitude- spreading the word around the world, not limited to a specific field of activity.

Today, popular words include not only the achievements of science and technology, not only the hybrids “spanglish”, “danglish” and others, but also youth slang, as well as web slang.

Note that in the everyday life of a native speaker, there are approximately 50,000 – 70,000 words, many of which are practically not used. For a person who is just about to learn a foreign language, at the initial stage it will be enough to learn 3 000 – 5 000 words. Ideally, for reading literature, understanding what is happening and full communication, you need to remember 15 000 – 17 000 lexical units.

It is interesting:

It would take a person 744 days to type all the words in the English language, assuming an eight-hour work day and a ten-minute break per hour. However, at the same time, the vocabulary will be replenished and you will have to spend much more time, namely 2 years 135 days and 4 hours.

The vocabulary of the English language is rapidly filling up with new lexical units. Scientists have calculated that an average of 15 new words appear per day, but not all of them take root in the language, but only those that are most widely used.

If not "selfie" in 2013, we would never have known that a snapshot of ourselves had a specific name. Following him came the well-known today bookfie,“shelfie”, "legsie" and others, which can often be found on social networks in the form of hashtags. If you are a person who does not complain about fantasy, you can also come up with your own word ending in "sie"/"fie", post it on a social network and see what the effect will be.

Printed dictionaries and word count

About 15 years ago you could buy an English dictionary containing 500 000 words. Then such a number seemed quite decent even for a linguist, because, according to scientists, the average person uses about 5,000 words in his speech. This is what is called the active dictionary. All other lexical units remain passive: we can recognize and understand them in texts, but not use them in everyday speech.

How many words do you need to know?

Now let's move on to the question of how many words in English you need to know. It all depends on how to talk, with whom to talk and what topics to discuss. In order to chat with a pen pal, 500-1000 words will be enough, including verbs, nouns and adjectives. For comparison, the active vocabulary of a native speaker is 15,000 to 40,000 words. However, here it is worth a little reservation, so that every student of English does not think that you can master a thousand words and chat freely. This thousand is different for everyone. And if you look into the frequency dictionary, it becomes clear that most of the vocabulary consists of prepositions, pronouns, numerals, interrogative words that may not be used at all in a conversation.

According to the authors of the Oxford Learner's Dictionary, in order to understand 80-90% of the text, you need 3,000 words, which is approximately the Intermediate level.

In order for words not to go into a passive, they need to be used regularly - repeated at regular intervals. Even better is to work with flash cards that allow you to repeat everything that has been completed at any time.

In order not to guess the meaning of phrases, but to know them for sure, you need a little more units - approximately 5,000 - 6,000. With such a reserve, you can freely read books, watch movies, and communicate on the most common topics.

GLM and new words in English

If we look at the GLM (Global Language Monitor), we can see how many words in the English language regularly appear and become popular. And this is neither more nor less than 1,041,258 (at the time of writing). And this number is constantly growing. Despite such a vocabulary boom, this does not mean that everyone will be able to actively use new words, so you should focus on the most frequently used units.

You may ask, how do words become popular, who popularizes them? Of course, the media and social networks. In order for a word to be included in the GLM list, it must be repeated at least 25,000 times, while affecting a certain breadth and depth of use. Depth is the form of words in the media, while breadth is its distribution around the world.

What words are popular today?

Bigly - extremely, very, strongly. It became popular after Donald Trump used in his speech in a different sense "I"m going to cut taxes bigly, and you"re going to raise taxes bigly. Social networks literally exploded from what they heard, discussing whether he really used this word in the right context.It later turned out that Trump used the expression "big league", but it no longer mattered.

Below you can see the most popular words today:

Brexit - the exit of the UK from the European Union;
non-binary - polysexuality, attraction to several genders;
memory care - the fight against Alzheimer's disease;
texticate - write messages on social networks;
trumpism - the style of thinking and behavior of a Republican;
futebol - a variation on the theme of football. This word was first seen by the world in Brazil in 2011;
emoticons. smileys, emoji's - all used emoticons (smiles) in correspondence. Since 2013, these words have become especially popular;
Chinglish - Chinese-English. However, today such words are enough to understand that the same variant English is spreading around the world at lightning speed.

In December 2016, the expression Web 2.0 appeared - a technical term for a new generation of web products and services. Interestingly, the word 1,00,001 became “financial tsunami,” a global financial restructuring that came out of nowhere and claimed trillions of dollars.

This term was preceded by the following words:

jai ho - long live victory (translated from Hindi);
N00b is a pejorative term for a novice who makes unforgivable mistakes;
slumdog - a person who lives in a slum;
cloud computing - cloud computing;
carbon neutral - with a neutral carbon release rate;
slow food - movement against the fast food system;
octomom - mother of "octuplets" Nadya Suleman;
greenwashing - green camouflage, a form of eco-marketing that uses methods that indicate the environmental friendliness of products;
defriend - remove from the list of friends, "unfriend".

So how many main words?

It is quite difficult to answer the question of how many basic words there are in the English language, since these very basic words can vary from person to person. You can select an average of 150-200 verbs and 500 nouns, link it all together with prepositions and pronouns and see what happens.

People who are starting to learn English are often interested in the question of how many English words to learn per day. You should not load yourself with 50 or 100 words a day, so you won’t last long, 10-15 words will be enough to replenish your stock at the same time and not lose your desire to learn English.

If you want to know the latest information, take a look at. Thanks to the tutorial, you will learn English without leaving your home, and the articles will help answer all your questions.

Knowledge of English is essential in many professions today. If it is not directly required by the employer, then, in most cases, you need it for personal purposes.

I constantly face the problem that it seems that I already know a lot of words, but nevertheless, I have to constantly lick in the dictionary. And how many words are there? :)

How many words are in English

In fact, the exact number is very difficult to calculate. After all, every new word is born approximately every hour and a half. And besides, it is not entirely clear whether it is worth counting all the word forms of each word, which greatly complicates the task. Philologists wonder if slang words should be considered.

And keeping track of the appearance of new words, of course, is very difficult. However, I found information about the company GLM, which does exactly this. According to her data, there are 1,004,010 words in the English language. A lot, right?

For comparison, it is believed that the Russian language has 500,000 words. This is 2 times less than in English. And I think the speed of new words in "great and mighty" is much lower than in English.

In addition, I wondered what a word needs to be officially introduced as a new one. After all, someone can just utter a non-existent word in an interview. And what, it will appear in online dictionaries? No. It is not that simple. For a word to become officially registered, it must be mentioned on social networks about 25,000 times.

Which languages have the most words?

In the first place goes all the same English. But who is following? One American newspaper published a short list. Here is a list of the first four places after English:

Chinese - about five hundred thousand words. This number includes all kinds of dialects.
Japanese language - two hundred thirty thousand words.
Spanish - two hundred twenty-five thousand words.
And only in fourth place is the Russian language - one hundred and ninety-five thousand words. At the top, I wrote that there are about 500 thousand words in the Russian language. Yes, one source says so. But USA Today sees it differently.