?
Thanks,
Rock
2006-11-22 05:33:05 · 4 answers · asked by Anonymous in Society & Culture ➔ Languages
To demonstrate the difficulty in counting words, over the centuries many scholars have attempted to count how many different words Shakespeare used in his corpus of work. The counts run anywhere from 16,000 to 30,000. It is thought that he contributed at least 2,000 new words to the English language.
The OED2, the largest English-language dictionary, contains some 290,000 entries. Of course, there are lots of slang and regional words that are not included and the big dictionary omits many proper names, scientific and technical terms, and jargon as a matter of editorial policy (e.g., there are some 1.4 million named species of insect alone). All told, estimates of the total vocabulary of English start at around three million words and go up from there.
Of these, about 200,000 words are in common use today. An educated person has a vocabulary of about 20,000 words and uses about 2,000 in a week's conversation. (These estimates vary widely depending on who is doing the counting, so don't take them as absolute.)
2006-11-22 05:42:42 · answer #1 · answered by braennvin2 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
very little. shakespeare wrote in old english. we speak moderna english. both are ENGLISH.
2006-11-22 13:35:14 · answer #2 · answered by mickey g 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
do you think anyone actually cares. we just talk!
2006-11-22 13:34:58 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
who cares?!thou shoud not think so much at this....
2006-11-22 13:37:11 · answer #4 · answered by kalliste 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋