3.9 Fun Facts About English Vocabulary (optional)

• The 2nd Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) (1989) 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.

• This suggests that there are, at the very least, 250,000 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% are no longer in current use.

• Over half of these words are nouns, about a quarter adjectives, and about a seventh verbs; the rest is made up of adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, exclamations, etc. And these figures don't take account of entries with senses for different word classes (such as nouns and adjectives).

• Average L1 English speakers know about 20,000 words; college-educated L1 English speakers have a vocabulary size of about 40, 000 words

• Native English speaking children learn about 1,000 words every year

• TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) requires the test-takers to know 8,000 word families

If you want to know your vocabulary size, you can take this test at VocabularySize.com.

We have already learned that English has a large vocabulary size. Have you wondered where did these words come from?

Watch the two YouTube videos to learn about the origins of English.

Q1.Where do English words come from?

• The English language belongs to the Indo-European language family. Its vocabulary comes from three main sources:

  • • Germanic core (short, simple, and plain words, e.g., bagel, angst, noodle, hamster, waltz)

    • Norman-French (words associated with cuisine, law, and politics, e.g., denim, liberal, war, mutton, dossier, detour, hotel, laisser-faire, avant-garde, ballet, chauffeur, cliche)

    • Latin or Greek (academic words, words in medicine, and religion)

Q3. What Percentage Of English Words Are Derived From Latin?

• About 80% of the entries in any English dictionary are borrowed, mainly from Latin.

• Over 60% of all English words have Greek or Latin roots.

• In the vocabulary of the sciences and technology, the figure rises to over 90%.

• About 10% of the Latin vocabulary has found its way directly into English without an intermediary (usually French). For a time the whole Latin lexicon became potentially English and many words were coined on the basis of Latin precedent.

• Words of Greek origin have generally entered English in one of three ways:

1) indirectly by way of Latin,

2) borrowed directly from Greek writers, or

3) especially in the case of scientific terms, formed in modern times by combining Greek elements in new ways.

The direct influence of the classical languages began with the Renaissance and has continued ever since. Even today, Latin and Greek roots are the chief source for English words in science and technology.

English also contains borrowed words through contact with our languages. New words can be formed in a number of ways such as compounding and blending.

We'll now look at different ways that new words can be formed in English.

The longest English word is insane. The first longest English word that can be deciphered is 'pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis'. Can you recognize meaningful parts in it? Can you guess its meaning by adding up the meanings of its componential parts?

Another interesting and long coined word is 'supercalifragilisticepialidocious' from Mary Poppins. Can you pronounce it? Can you guess its meaning?