![]() ![]() Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal (Dictionary of the Dutch language) ![]() The Second Edition of the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionaryġ71,476 words in current use, and 47,156 obsolete words 615,100 definitions Lit: Comprehensive Chinese Word Dictionary)ģ70,000 words 23,000 head Chinese character entries So here’s a list for 11 of the most spoken languages around the world (sources given as hyperlinks): LANGUAGE So after having scourged the net for scattered answers, I’d love to share with you my findings. I thus began to research answers to this question in regards to some of the world’s major languages, but quite surprisingly, I couldn’t find any resource on the net actually listing languages and their associated number of words based on dictionary word count. The most “objective” measure that we have available for counting the number of words contained in a given language, then, is to calculate the number of words contained in its largest dictionary (really, it’s not that objective, but it’s the only measure we have access to!). Plus, what about medical and scientific terms? Should they be counted as part of our “vocabulary”? And if we look at the English language word count, for example, what should we do about Latin words used in law, French words used in cooking, German words used in academic writing, Japanese words used in martial arts? Do you count Scots dialect? Teenage slang? Abbreviations? Should we count them as English words or not? People continuously invent new words, alter some existing ones, or stop using others altogether. After all, it is said that Shakespeare himself invented 1,700 new words! Languages are evolving and continuously changing, and subject to people’s own creativity and imagination. How many words are there in some of the world’s major languages? As I stated in Part 1 of this article, there is really is no way to answer this question. If you haven’t done so already, read through Part 1 before continuing! Welcome to Part 2 of my post on “How many words do I need to know? The 95/5 rule in language learning”.
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