How many words does a person use in everyday life?

Vocabulary is a set of words in a person’s native language that are understandable in meaning and used in communication. It consists of words that are constantly used in oral and written speech, as well as words that are clear in meaning during conversation or reading literature.

There are two types of vocabulary:

• Active. This is a stock of words that a person uses every day in speech when communicating with people around him.
• Passive. These are words that are not used in communication, but are familiar by ear and content.

Active and passive lexicon contain unequal word volume indicators. The active vocabulary of an adult greatly exceeds the passive one. The volume of words in both dictionaries is prone to constant change. They are able to increase if a person learns new terms, reads, develops, or decrease.

Active and passive vocabulary can decrease due to age, when words are forgotten or when they stop being used in communication. In this case, words will disappear from a person’s vocabulary or be replaced by new ones.

Estimating the exact vocabulary size of the average person is a difficult task. No one knows specifically what it should be in terms of content and number of words. The guideline in this matter is the dictionary of the Russian language by V. I. Dahl, which contains about two hundred thousand words and Dictionary Ozhegov, volume of 70 thousand Russian words.

Of course, it is clear that such a volume of words is beyond the power of even smart person. Human memory is not capable of accommodating such an amount of information without harm to health.

An interesting study was recently conducted to determine the volume of words among native Russian speakers. It was carried out in the form of testing, where those interested marked in the provided list the words they understood and used. Words were marked only if the definition was fully understood.

To improve the quality of testing and sort out unreliable information, non-existent designations were present in the lists. The presence in the subject's questionnaire of at least one non-existent word marked as familiar to him was considered unreliable information and was not taken into account.

During the work carried out, the following data were obtained:

• A person's passive vocabulary increases every year until the age of 20. Further, the rate of development decreases, gradually disappearing after 40 years. At this age and until the end of life, a person’s vocabulary remains unchanged.
• Studying at school adds up to 10 words to children's passive vocabulary every day. The student’s active and passive vocabulary is constantly growing.
• By the end of their studies, teenagers speak an average of 50 thousand words.
• School time increases the growth of word volume by almost 3 times.
• After leaving school, a person’s passive vocabulary stops growing and averages 3–4 words daily.
• At the age of 55, the vocabulary continues to decline, due to irreversible deterioration of memory and the use of some words in practice.

The study assessed the educational level of the subjects, yielding interesting findings. It turns out that people have the greatest amount of words at different times in their lives. Average special education implies the end of word growth at the age of 40, and the highest a little later - after 50 years. This 10-year gap is explained by the discrepancy between the work performed and the position held by people with different education. Some people at the age of 50 read scientific books and gain new knowledge due to the specifics of their work or at will for self-education.

It was also revealed interesting fact, which showed that subjects who completed their studies in educational institution and those who did not complete it for personal reasons have the same passive vocabulary.

Vocabulary vocabulary of adults with different levels education:

• Passive vocabulary has the same indicators among people with secondary education and secondary special education. It varies between 70-75 thousand words.
• People who received higher education, or who have not graduated from college, have a stock of 80 thousand words in their luggage.
• Educated people, candidates of science, have a rich vocabulary of 86 thousand words, which is 6 thousand more than those who have received a higher education.

The education received, of course, affects a person’s vocabulary, but not 100%. A person himself makes a huge contribution to the development of vocabulary, constantly improving himself and engaging in self-education. Therefore, it is easy to meet a person who only graduated from school with a vocabulary several times larger than that of someone who received a higher education. Main role Sociability, occupation and lifestyle of a person play a role in this matter.

The conducted research does not provide a complete picture of the vocabulary of the average Russian person, as it contains small errors. But despite this, it helps to determine the connection between vocabulary and age and level of education.

How to expand your vocabulary

There are no universal ways to increase words in the vocabulary of your native language. Each person chooses what suits only him. To replenish your vocabulary, several methods developed by polyglots will help to study foreign language.

To increase passive vocabulary:

• Reading literature.

The more and more often a person reads books, the richer and more interesting his speech sounds. It is pleasant to communicate and spend time with well-read people. This is a universal way to enrich your stock of new words. The quality of the selected literature is not the least important. It is better to give preference in choosing popular science books, classical literature, avoiding modern “soap” novels or detective stories in them, you definitely won’t find new words in the correct application.

• Be interested in the meaning of unknown words.

Always ask your interlocutor for the meaning of unclear words or new terms; do not ignore them. During communication it is much easier to assimilate new information and can be quickly restored if necessary from memory. If a new interesting word was heard by radio announcers, then its meaning can be seen in special dictionary.

• Dictionaries.

Every literate person should have a set of dictionaries at home that need to be used periodically. This is the explanatory dictionary of V. I. Dahl, Ozhegov, as well as the “Dictionary of Stresses for Radio and Television Workers.” It will help restore gaps in accent placement and contains many interesting words.

“The Dictionary of Stresses for Radio and Television Workers” has been published since 1960. Its authors are M.V. Zarva and F.L. Ageenko. The history of creating a dictionary of accents for radio and television workers began with the release of an announcer's reference book in 1951, and 3 years later the “Dictionary of Stresses” was released. To help the announcer."

All dictionaries for radio and television workers are based on the reserves of “heavy” words accumulated in the card index during the formation of the first radio in the era of the USSR. The radio and television files were constantly being replenished. Many words were never included in dictionaries. "Dictionary of Radio and Television" contains the title geographical names, names of works of art, surnames and first names of people.

How to expand your active vocabulary

To increase your vocabulary, you will need the ability of a person to translate words from a passive vocabulary to an active one. The following methods will help with this:

• Notes.

Write down new words along with their meanings on pieces of paper and stick them around the house in places where they will be most likely to catch your eye. This method will help you remember information more efficiently and quickly without memorizing it.

• Associative series.

To remember a word, build a suitable association for it. It can be aimed at smell, taste, motor, tactile characteristics or tied to color scheme. The result depends on the person’s imagination and desire to consolidate the information received. An associative series helps to remember difficult words and makes it easier to remember in right time.

There are also exercises for developing your vocabulary. One of the most effective is the oral exercise of composing a story. To do this, you need to try to tell a small story, using only nouns, then only verbs or adjectives. This is not an easy exercise. It helps to use the existing stock of words, while refreshing them in a person’s memory.

The richest and most beautiful Russian language allows people who speak it to express themselves in a variety of ways. Accuracy of formulation and beautiful speech depend on the vocabulary a person owns. The more words he uses, the more intellectually developed he is considered. Therefore, it becomes important to increase the number of words used.

Scientific vocabulary is called a lexicon, meaning words familiar to an individual, a group, or included in a language. It is conventionally divided into;

• Active. The first group includes words used every day. They are included in both written and oral speech. A sign of an active vocabulary is free use that does not require additional effort.
• Passive. Passive words include understandable words that appear in various sources, but are not used in speech, or are used but extremely rarely. They are used when necessary, but it takes effort to remember.
• External. The external lexicon denotes unknown words related to specific areas of knowledge. These are professional terms, neologisms, etc. It is hardly possible to make clear boundaries between these groups. They are rather shaky and fluctuate in one direction or the other. When growing up and mental development the lexicon is growing.

So, if a child going to first grade speaks two thousand words, then in the last grade this number already grows to five thousand. For those who study and develop further, the vocabulary reaches 10,000 words or more. Then most of them are classified as passive stock.

Erudite people sometimes they even speak 50,000 words. But only a small part is used daily when communicating. The rest of the vocabulary is used only with intellectuals like him.

Exercises to expand your vocabulary

The following exercises are performed in written or orally.

• Nouns. They tell a short story using only nouns. "Day. Work. End. Exit. Door. Key. Entrance. Car. Key. Ignition" and so on.
• Verbs. The same thing that was told using nouns is repeated, only with verbs.
• Adjectives and adverbs. Then comes the turn of other parts of speech.
• Alphabet. Come up with related words that sequentially begin with the letters of the alphabet in order. “Alena talks in the evening, walking to the treasured spruce tree, gesticulating and eloquently cherishing the cute tender dandelions. Pasha follows nearby, dragging a convenient chrome flashlight, often catching the nimble chirping with an extravagant humorous language.”
• Monophone. They come up with their own speech, the words of which begin with the same letter. Each of them is connected to each other, even if the meaning suffers.

It is not easy to do each of the exercises. But words gradually move from a passive vocabulary to an active one and it is replenished.

Techniques for expanding your vocabulary without extra time

Developing vocabulary is essentially necessary for voicing your thoughts, intentions, analysis and conclusions. This skill is strengthened by practice and weakened by its absence. Therefore, in order to develop your speech, you should constantly communicate. The growth of vocabulary is ensured: by learning new words that we hear from our interlocutors; precise definitions when words are translated from a passive vocabulary into an active one.

• Therefore, it is advisable to communicate with unlike people. These are friends, neighbors, fellow students, comrades in the gym. People meeting on the Internet on forums and pages social networks, travel companions and vendors also serve as opportunities for communication and as a way to expand your speech.
• Another effective way replenish your vocabulary, which does not require special time - listening to audio books. This is relevant when you have to spend a lot of time on the road, driving your car, ideal for auditory learners (for people who better perceive information by ear). A variety of books are sold in this format: novels, aphorisms, and philosophical teachings. By recording it on a flash drive, you can now not get bored in a traffic jam, but listen to a fascinating story. It is convenient to listen to audio books before bed.

Replenishing vocabulary with time allocation

The following activities will help increase your vocabulary.

• Reading. Reading is a rich source of information. Books, newspapers, online publications, magazines - everywhere there are inexhaustible reserves of replenishing the vocabulary. It is advisable to devote an hour a day to this exciting activity. Sometimes it's good to say the words out loud.
• Studying of foreign language. Do not limit your vocabulary to knowledge of one Russian language. Others are also useful to study. How more people enriches his speech, the better connections are provided, and it is easier to recall words from memory.
• Games. There are interesting and exciting linguistic games: charades, puzzles and the like. When they guess them, they inevitably become interested in the words and meaning.
• Diary. Another useful activity is keeping a diary. When it is impossible to take foreign language courses, they write for themselves. This good way improve your vocabulary, because when taking notes, you formulate thoughts that are in the emotional and motivating spheres.
• Memorization. Memorization makes it possible to introduce new words into active stock. This is done by retelling what is heard, memorizing verses and definitions. It is one of the most effective methods of acquiring new knowledge.

For this it is important:

• include new words in speech every day;
• apply notebook, putting in there intricate statements, words, phrases with clever expressions;
• study the essence of new words by adding visualization techniques;
• memorize poems, quotes, sayings, etc.

Improving your vocabulary requires conscious action. For achievement beautiful speech constant training is required. Ignoring new words will not give them a chance to enter the active or passive vocabulary. It turns out that those who want to expand their vocabulary and enrich their language should make regular volitional efforts for this.

The Russian language is distinguished by its richness of vocabulary. Dahl's dictionary contains about two hundred thousand lexical units. IN Everyday life much fewer words are used.

Age norms for the number of words used

The number of words used varies throughout life. According to medical standards, the number of words a child uses preschool age should be between two and three thousand. Over the years of schooling, the active dictionary is replenished to five thousand.

For people who have received higher education, the norm is a vocabulary of up to ten thousand words.

A group of scientists from America and Brazil conducted a study of age-related changes in vocabulary. Two hundred thousand people took part in the experiment, so the data obtained during it can be considered quite accurate.

The survey showed that the maximum rate of learning new words occurs between the ages of three and sixteen years. During this period, a person learns an average of 4 new words every day.

After sixteen years, the speed decreases noticeably and, up to fifty years, there is about one new word for every day of life. People over fifty years old retain their previously acquired vocabulary, but practically no new ones are added.

How many words are needed for everyday communication?

It is necessary to distinguish between the concepts of active and passive vocabulary. For example, reading fiction requires the reader to know tens of thousands of words and phrases. But you don't have to eat them all every day.

In ordinary life, a thousand words may be enough for an adult during the day if he professional activity not related to communication. But this is an extreme option; for full communication, at least two thousand are required. Professionals in different fields add another one and a half to two thousand special terms.

It is believed that at the dawn of human existence, speech was not much richer than that of some animals. If, for example, a chicken’s “language” has 10 simple signals, a baboon’s “language” has 18, then a primitive man, like a chimpanzee, had a “vocabulary” that barely exceeded 30 signals - cries.

As society developed, human speech was constantly enriched with new words. The Dictionary of the Modern Russian Language, published in 1956-1965 by the Academy of Sciences, contains 120,480 words in 17 volumes.

How quickly do children learn speech? If a child at the age of one year knows only three words, then six months later his vocabulary increases to 26-28 words. At four years old he already knows about 1000 words, and at six and a half years old he pronounces an average of 2 thousand words and understands the meaning of another 6 thousand.

Scientists have conducted research and calculated that in the works of the ancient Roman poet Horace there are 6084 different words; the English poet Milton has approximately 8 thousand words; in Homer's poems - about 9 thousand words; in the works of Shakespeare - 15 thousand words (according to other sources - up to 24 thousand words), in the works of Pushkin - 21 thousand words.

It is interesting to compare with the dictionaries of great writers the number of words that are used ordinary people. According to psychologists, a 14-year-old teenager uses 9 thousand words, the average adult uses 11,700 words, and an educated person uses up to 13,500 words.

I wonder how many words a person says every day? It depends on temperament, profession and other conditions. Scientists still established an average figure: 30 thousand words. At the same time, a person speaks at an average speed of 125-160 words per minute, and thinks in the same words twice as fast.

According to research, the recognized “talkers” are the French. Their average speech speed is 350 syllables per minute. The Japanese are behind them - 310 syllables and the Germans are not far behind - 250 syllables. Polynesia and Melanesia - an average of 50 syllables per minute.

The Finns are the most silent nation in the world. The Canadians follow. The most talkative and loud are the Italians, Brazilians and Mexicans.

Is it useful to talk? Useful - says American Professor Williams. People who don’t talk much are susceptible to various kinds of stress, as they do not give an outlet to the energy that has accumulated in them. As a result, they age prematurely.

And one more interesting data. Experts have calculated that each person speaks on average one hour a day. Over the course of a lifetime, this is approximately 2.5 years. If everything said by a person during his life is recorded on paper, the result will be a thousand volumes of 400 pages each.

For a long time, many people have thought that women speak more than men. But recently, scientists have tested and refuted this opinion, finding that, in general, both men and women pronounce the same number of words, which means they are equally talkative.

The objective of the study was to determine the volume of passive vocabulary of native Russian speakers. The measurement was carried out using , in which respondents were asked to mark familiar words from a specially compiled sample. According to the rules of the test, a word was considered “familiar” if the respondent could define at least one of its meanings. The test procedure is described in detail. To improve the accuracy of the test and identify respondents who take it sloppily, non-existent words were added to the test. If the respondent marked at least one such word as familiar, his results were not taken into account. More than 150 thousand people took part in the study (of which 123 thousand passed the test accurately).

First, let's analyze the effect of age on vocabulary.

The graph shows the percentiles of the resulting distribution. For example, the lowest curve (10th percentile) for 20 years gives 40 thousand words. This means that 10% of respondents of this age have a vocabulary below this value, and 90% - above. The central curve (median) highlighted in blue corresponds to a vocabulary such that half of the respondents of the corresponding age performed worse, and half - better. The topmost curve—the 90th percentile—cuts off the result above which only 10% of respondents with the maximum vocabulary showed.

The graph shows the following:

1. Vocabulary growth grows at a nearly constant rate until about age 20, after which the rate of vocabulary acquisition decreases, tapering off by age 45. After this age, vocabulary practically does not change.
2. During school, a teenager learns 10 words a day. This value seems unnaturally large, but is explained by the fact that in the test derived words were taken into account separately, as independent words.
3. By the time a teenager leaves school, the average person knows 51 thousand words.
4. During schooling, vocabulary increases approximately 2.5 times.
5. After leaving school until middle age, the average person learns 3 new words a day.
6. After reaching 55 years of age, vocabulary begins to decline slightly. This may be due to forgetting words that are not used for a long time. Interestingly, this age approximately coincides with retirement.

Now let's divide all respondents into groups according to education level. The following graph shows the median vocabulary scores of these groups. Curves start and end at different places due to the fact that the statistics for all groups are different - for example, there were not enough respondents with incomplete secondary education over 45 for the results to be statistically significant, so it was necessary to cut off the corresponding curve so early.

From the graph you can find out that

1. Perhaps vocabulary saturation occurs in at different ages depending on education. Thus, for respondents with secondary specialized education, saturation can be determined at around 43 years old, with higher education - at 51 years old, for candidates and doctors - at 54 years old. This could be explained by the specifics of the respondents’ work - most likely, holders of an academic degree continue to study various literature even in mature age. Or permanent life in the university environment, with its abundance of communication with educated people of different specializations, new words are constantly thrown up. However, with technical point From a visual perspective, such conclusions should not be drawn yet - the resulting curves are quite noisy, and it is very difficult to determine exactly where saturation begins. Perhaps a further set of statistics will make it possible to see the dependence of the age of saturation on the level of education (if any) more clearly.
2. There is practically no difference in vocabulary between those who entered the university, but did not finish their studies, and those who completed this path to the end (for students: this does not mean that you can not go to lectures).

Now let’s exclude the influence of age, leaving only respondents over 30 years old in the sample. This will allow you to concentrate on education.

From the graph we see the following:

1. Respondents who have just completed school know, on average, 2-3 thousand words more than those who did not finish school at the time.
2. The vocabulary of those who have received secondary or specialized secondary education is practically the same and averages 75 thousand words.
3. Those who studied at universities and institutes (and not necessarily those who graduated from them) know an average of 81 thousand words.
4. Candidates and doctors of science know an average of 86 thousand words. Thus, an academic degree adds about 5 thousand units of vocabulary compared to higher education.
5. Education, of course, influences vocabulary size. However, the variation within each group with the same education is significantly greater than the difference between the group means. In other words, a person who has not completed school may well know more words than a candidate of science. Here are specific figures - 20% of respondents with incomplete secondary education, who showed best result for their group, have a vocabulary that exceeds the vocabulary of half of the respondents with scientific degree. Most likely, they read more on different topics, are interested in and understand more regions.

The resulting vocabulary sizes - tens of thousands of words - seem quite large. There are two reasons for this. First, it measured passive vocabulary (words a person recognizes in text or hearing) rather than active vocabulary (words a person uses in speech or writing). These reserves differ significantly - the passive one is always much larger. The calculated vocabularies of writers, for example, are precisely active. Secondly, in the test all derived words were taken into account separately (for example, “work” and “work”, or “city” and “urban”).

Separately, I would like to note that the results obtained do not give an idea of ​​the vocabulary of the “average” (if such a thing exists) native Russian speaker. For example, the level of education of respondents who passed the test is significantly higher than the national level - 65% of respondents have higher education, while in Russia there are only 23% of such people (according to the 2010 All-Russian Population Census). Then, it is obvious that the respondents who took the Internet test are mostly active Internet users, and this also makes the sample specific (mainly for older people). In the end, not everyone is interested in determining their vocabulary, but among our respondents there are 100% of them. It is logical to assume that the vocabulary results obtained from such a special sample should be slightly higher than the “statistical average”.

So, the data obtained revealed a strong dependence of vocabulary on age, and a weaker dependence on the level of education. Obviously, there are other factors that influence vocabulary - reading, communication, work, hobbies, lifestyle. All these are topics for further research.