2006-12-19 00:48:45 · 17 answers · asked by Shaun W 1 in Society & Culture ➔ Languages
There are 1.5 million entries in the Oxford English Dictionary, but this by no means indicates that every individual knows them all. The OED also focuses on British and American English and tends to give Canadian, Australian, Indian, Nigerian, and other "colonial" Englishes short shrift. The average person knows and uses about 15,000 words and has a recognition vocabulary of about that same number.
2006-12-19 01:10:10 · answer #1 · answered by Taivo 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
There is no single sensible answer to this question. It is impossible to count the number of words in a language, because it is so hard to decide what counts as a word. Is dog one word, or two (a noun meaning 'a kind of animal', and a verb meaning 'to follow persistently')? If we count it as two, then do we count inflections separately too (dogs plural noun, dogs present tense of the verb). Is dog-tired a word, or just two other words joined together? Is hot dog really two words, since we might also find hot-dog or even hotdog?
It is also difficult to decide what counts as 'English'. What about medical and scientific terms? 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? Youth slang? Computing jargon?
The Second Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary contains full entries for 171,476 words in current use, and 47,156 obsolete words. To this may be added around 9,500 derivative words included as subentries. Over half of these words are nouns, about a quarter adjectives, and about a seventh verbs; the rest is made up of interjections, conjunctions, prepositions, suffixes, etc. These figures take no account of entries with senses for different parts of speech (such as noun and adjective).
This suggests that there are, at the very least, a quarter of a million distinct English words, excluding inflections, and words from technical and regional vocabulary not covered by the OED, or words not yet added to the published dictionary, of which perhaps 20 per cent are no longer in current use. If distinct senses were counted, the total would probably approach three quarters of a million.
2006-12-19 08:50:21 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 2⤊ 0⤋
I am a honest person and i have not a clue, asking this is like saying how many numbers are there in the world! no matter how many you count you still find more! think about tit just the word a means a lot of things being a noun and so many more! you can't just say a huge number! just like swear words are just being made like "that"! i have read somewhere that everyday at least a new word is being discovered! it is true! if you have any more questions feel free to email me!
2006-12-19 11:05:23 · answer #3 · answered by Tee~ 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
2
"english" and "language"
2006-12-19 09:11:04 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
1 23456 78895 378906 543 237 words. I have counted them all.
2006-12-19 08:55:44 · answer #5 · answered by MM 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
About 5,000 words in a newspaper.
2006-12-19 18:14:30 · answer #6 · answered by Nicolette 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Too damn many, in fact some of them just get made up on the spot. Look at http://www.urbandictionary.com
2006-12-19 08:55:58 · answer #7 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
As far as I know theres only 5
2006-12-19 08:56:13 · answer #8 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
whatever it is having at the moment plus one.somebody made one more word as it requires
2006-12-19 08:53:24 · answer #9 · answered by nahas p 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
15 WORDS.
2006-12-19 08:57:01 · answer #10 · answered by star 2 · 1⤊ 0⤋