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Baceloo Posted 14 years ago
Vocabulary

How many words does a native speaker of english know

Hello,

Can you please tell me how many words an average native speaker of English knows? How many of them are used in every day speech?

Thanks.
  

Top answer

stm This article claims that the average person knows 35,000 words. I can't find a study on unique words per day, but the consensus seems to be between 500 and 1,000.

— Vorpar

  • stm This article claims that the average person knows 35,000 words.
  • I can't find a study on unique words per day, but the consensus seems to be between 500 and 1,000.
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8 Answers
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8013859.stm

This article claims that the average person knows 35,000 words.

I can't find a study on unique words per day, but the consensus seems to be between 500 and 1,000.
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I've heard that's about 10 000 to 20 000 words. I cannot remember where I read about it.
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Men use about 2.000 words, women about 7k.
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Anonymous Men use about 2.000 words, women about 7k.
Have you any evidence for this?
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It just seems like 7K.
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yes, but they say the same 2000 words 7000 times.
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Anonymous It just seems like 7K.
So there is no evidence for this figure. We can safely ignore it.
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BacelooCan you please tell me how many words an average native speaker of English knows?
Collegiate dictionaries usually contain about 200,000 entries. College graduates do not know every word in such dictionaries, and college graduates are not 'average' native speakers, so I think we can be sure that the answer to your question is considerably less than 200,
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