Any language can have an infinite number of words in it (which one can learn after reading or studying enough linguistics). You can have a working knowledge of ANY language and speak it with a surprisingly limited I did this and do this (though my vocabulary is larger now) in several languages.I do not know the background of most of the posters here, yet I find it funny how English is "glorified" by monolingual English speakers. All languages are complex and interesting. English is not any easy language to learn.
I taught English for 10 years in Europe and heard from numerous people how "easy" English is yet they seem to have forgotten their 10 years of primary and /or secondary English classes that they have taken studying said language.
As to the original OP ...he just makes me want to puke...sounds like the usual RP/monolingual crap on how I should speak, read, spell or write according to him or her. Nothing as irritating as native speaker telling others what is correct....especially to other native speakers.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pdurrant
You can have a working knowledge of English with a surprisingly small vocabulary (say, 2,000 words).
But English has accumulated a very large number of words. The OED, the closest thing to an authority in English, reckons there are about 175,000 words in current use. (Although other sources, using different definitions of what counts as a word, have said that there's over a million!)
Apparently, the Scrabble list for up to nine letter words has 160,000 words.
http://testyourvocab.com/ is a fun web site. I suspect that their definition is word is close the the OED's, which indicates that the average (middle aged and older) participant in their survey knows about one fifth of the total available English vocabulary!
Of course, this explains why a programme like Call My Bluff could have worked. |