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*** How many words does an average English speaker know? ***

Britain’s Guardian newspaper, in 1986, estimated the size of the average person’s vocabulary as developing from roughly 300 words at two years old, through 5,000 words at five years old, to some 12,000 words at the age of 12.

The Guardian’s research suggested that it stays at around this number of words for the remainder of most (average) people’s lives—adding that this is roughly the same number of words as those drawn on by a popular newspaper in the course of producing its daily editions—while a graduate might have a vocabulary nearly twice as large (23,000 words). Shakespeare, according to Robert McCrum et al (whose estimate of the average vocabulary is 15,000 words), had one of the largest recorded vocabularies of any English writer at around 30,000 words.

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The Economist, a blog dealing with World Politics, Economics. Business and Finance, provide a vocabulary test HERE from which researchers have published these results.

* Most adult native test-takers range from 20,000–35,000 words
*Average native test-takers of age 8 already know 10,000 words
*Average native test-takers of age 4 already know 5,000 words

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HOW MANY WORDS DOES THE AVERAGE PERSON KNOW?

There is a common notion that the average English-speaking adult knows between 20,000 and 30,000 words. Recently, a research was published about an analysis of 10 years worth of Wall Street Journal newspapers. It reported that after removing duplicates and names, less than 20,000 unique words were used.
I have a huge interest in linguistics, so naturally this intrigued me.

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The Average 20-Year-Old American Knows 42,000 Words, Claims Study - How Do You Compare?

Language experts have always struggled to estimate the size of people's vocabulary. But now researchers have been dipping into a huge pool of information collected through social media in a bid to settle a piece of the debate.
The psychologists from Ghent University in Belgium found that an average 20-year-old native English-speaking American knows 42,000 dictionary words. Their findings were recently published in Frontiers in Psychology.

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How many words do YOU know? Take the interactive test to find out if you match up to the average of 42,000

It has been argued that the number of word types in a language is limitless because people continue to coin new words.
However, a new study reveals that by the time they are 20 years-old, the average native English speaking American knows 42,000 dictionary words.
Researchers also found that as we grow older, one new word is added to our vocabulary every two days - which means the average person will know an additional 6,000 words by age 60.
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從以上英美網站取得的資料得知:
英美2歲兒童懂300英文單字
4至5歲兒童懂5000字
8歲兒童懂1萬字
12歲懂1.2萬字
成年人懂 2萬至3.5萬字
(或) 成年人懂 2萬至3萬字
(或) 成年人懂 5萬字
一般20歲的美國人懂 4.2萬字 (dictionary words)
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我手頭一本探討英文字源的書寫著:The average English-speaker knows around 50,000 words. 我自己也沒有一個字一個字地數,所以也無法講出學英文正確應該要懂幾個單字,但是任何一種語言要大致界定哪些是常用字,應該是很容易的,例如哪些是中文的常用字,大家所認同的應該是大同小異,同樣地,哪些是英文的常用字,英美人所選出的,也是大致雷同的,至於為何有英美本國人說成年人懂2萬多字,但有人卻說成年人懂5萬字,差異這麼大我想主要是算法不同吧!舉例來說happy是一個單字,但如果將happily或happiness也當成一個單字算,那一個字的詞類變化就能衍生出多個單字,如果由幾個單字所組成的慣用語也要另外算一個字的話,這種算法自然會讓人覺得學英文需懂5萬字。我自己從閱讀英文的經驗中,覺得要大致能流利閱讀一般普通英文,大概要懂2萬5千字。

 

 

 

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