How many words does a native speaker use in daily life?
“
Green Eggs and Ham,” is a book written by Dr. Seuss (a pen-name of Theodor Seuss Geisel), whose vocabulary famously consists of just fifty different words. It was the result of a bet between Seuss and his publisher, Bennett Cerf, that Seuss (after completing The Cat in the Hat using 225 words) could not complete an entire book using so few words.
Obviously, if one can write a book using as few as 50 words, it makes no doubt that having a vocabulary of 40,000 words is not necessary for communicating. For your information, though, according to Susie Dent, lexicographer and expert in dictionaries, the average active vocabulary of an adult English speaker is of around
20,000 words, with a passive one of around 40,000 words.
What is the difference between an active and a passive vocabulary? Simply put, an active vocabulary is comprised of words that you can recall and use in a sentence yourself. A passive vocabulary, on the other hand, is a vocabulary that you can recognize and know the definition of words, but are not able to use yourself.
Now, here’s where it gets interesting: although an average adult native English speaker has an active vocabulary of about 20,000 words, the
Reading Teachers Book of Lists claims that the
first 25 words are used in 33% of everyday writing, the first 100 words appear in 50% of adult and student writing, and the first 1,000 words are used in 89% of every day writing! Of course, as we progressively move to a higher percentage, the number of words starts to dramatically increase (especially after 95% of comprehension), but it has been said that a vocabulary of just 3000 words provides coverage for around 95% of common texts (such as news items, blogs, etc.).
Liu Na and Nation (1985) have shown that this is the rough
amount of words necessary before we can efficiently learn from context with unsimplified text.
When it comes to Chinese, approximately
3,000 characters are required to read a Mainland newspaper. The PRC government defines literacy amongst workers as a knowledge of 2,000 characters, though this would be only functional literacy. Of course, given the nature of the Chinese language, 3000 characters equals to many, many more words. Nevertheless, the highest level (VI) of the new Hànyǔ Shuǐpíng Kǎoshì (HSK), also known as the Chinese Proficiency Test, is a
vocabulary of 5000 words (2633 characters).
Finally, in French, the 600 most common words
apparently account for 90% of words found in common texts, although I cannot verify the veracity of this claim. But I think you can see from the numbers here that really,
in order to understand the biggest part of a language, it is not necessary to know tens of thousands of words. Generally speaking, a vocabulary of about 3000 words (not counting for inflexions, plurals, etc.), then, would be the number necessary to efficiently learn from context with unsimplified text.
Do the Math
We have seen that the Oxford English Dictionary contains 171,476 words in current use, whereas a vocabulary of just 3000 words provides coverage for around 95% of common texts. If you do the math, that’s 1.75% of the total number of words in use! That’s right, by knowing 1.75% of the English dictionary, you’ll be able to understand 95% of what you read. That’s still just 7.5% of the average passive vocabulary of a native speaker (3000 vs. 40,000 words). Isn’t that great news?
Let’s repeat the math for Chinese. The Hanyu Da Cidian contains 370,000 words, whereas 2500 words (1710 characters)
are necessary in order to “read Chinese newspapers and magazines and watch Chinese films”, according to the
HSK test(level 5). That’s 0.68% of the total number of words contained in the Hanyu Da Cidian! Knowing 5000 words, the minimum number required to pass the highest HSK test (level 6), would mean knowing 1.35% of the total number of words contained in the Hanyu Da Cidian.
Pareto’s Law and Language Learning
We will end this already lengthy article by once more taking a look at Pareto’s Law, also known as the 80-20 rule. If you’ve already forgot, the law states that for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. In other words, in the context of work or study, 20% of the efforts bring in 80% of the results.
Italian Economist Vilfredo Pareto
If we drop the unrealistic figures of the number of words in the largest dictionaries out there, and we instead count the number of words an average educated native speaker knows, which is around 30 to 40 thousand for many languages, we will find out that Pareto’s Law works on steroids! In many cases, knowing just 5-7% of the total number of words that a native speaker knows will allow you to understand anywhere from 90 to 95% of the vocabulary found in common texts! That’s right, 5 to 7% of the effort brings you 95% of the results. That is great news for you my friend.
So yes, languages contain fabulous numbers of words, and for many, learning a foreign language seems like an insurmountable barrier, something that takes dozens of years to accomplish. But the fact is, by learning from the very beginning words in context (I highly recommend the
Assimil method), and by gradually building your vocabulary to around 2500-3000 words, it is possible to reach quite rapidly a level at which you will be able to read common texts in the language and understand anywhere from 90 to 95% of it. This is essentially the “golden” number, since this amount of understanding is enough not to make reading in the language a frustrating experience. More importantly, though,
this is the roughamount of words necessary before you’ll be able to efficiently learn from context.
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