Vocabulary: how many words do you need to know? How many words do we use?

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 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.

How many words do you think the average person knows? Everyone remembers the famous passage from the immortal work of E. Petrov and I. Ilf “The Twelve Chairs” about the comparison of the vocabulary of Shakespeare and Ellochka the Ogress. The same quote can be cited as confirmation of the hypothesis that a person’s vocabulary depends on what that person is like. For example, an uneducated person or a small child would be several hundred; literate - several thousand.

And such geniuses as Pushkin or Shakespeare have up to fifteen thousand. By the way, clarifications should be made regarding the latter. The four-volume Dictionary of the Pushkin Language contains 21,191 words. Scientists have calculated exactly this number of words used in all the letters and works of the famous Russian poet. Lexicon the great English playwright has a little less - about fifteen thousand words. But according to some sources, there are about eighteen thousand of them. With regard to ordinary people the picture looks a little different. But first, let's figure out what a lexicon is. We will also define the concepts of passive and active vocabulary. So...

What is a lexicon?

From ancient Greek it means “word”, “figure of speech”. The exact lexicon sounds like this: a combination of words of a particular language, parts of words or language that a specific person or a specific group of people speaks. Vocabulary is the central part of the language, which names, forms and conveys knowledge about any phenomena or objects. In other words, this is a language section that studies words, pronunciation, composition of speech, etc.

Passive and active vocabulary

When we're talking about about a certain set of words that a person uses every day in his speech, which he uses to express his feelings and thoughts, then this implies an active vocabulary. The usage and combinatorics of such words can be varied. But it is still a “tool” of thoughts, feelings, actions. In the case when a person does not use certain words, but knows their meaning (often very approximate), he recognizes readable text, then we mean passive vocabulary. The passive lexicon includes words of special use: neologisms, archaisms, many dialectisms and the like.

Number of words in the lexicon

It should be noted, returning to the question of what a lexicon is, that each person’s active and passive dictionaries are individual. It depends on the age, profession, general cultural level, personal qualities, tastes and even the place of residence of the person. According to statistics, the active vocabulary of an adult with higher education is seven to nine thousand words. Passive - twenty to twenty-four thousand. Although in everyday communication we get by with only one or two thousand words. They say that the possibilities of human memory are almost limitless. Therefore, you can safely increase your vocabulary and learn foreign words, thereby enriching the Russian vocabulary.

The fact that the language's dictionary contains approximately 300 thousand words has only theoretical interest for beginners to learn this language. Almost main principle for the reasonable organization of your studies, especially at the initial stage, this is an economy of words. You need to learn to memorize as few words as possible, but do it as best as possible.

Let us emphasize that our approach is directly opposite to the guiding principle of “suggestopedia”, with its emphasis on the abundance of words presented to the student. As you know, in accordance with its canons, a beginner needs to be literally “showered with words.” It is best to give him or her 200 new words every day.

Is there any doubt that any normal person will forget all those numerous words with which he was “showered” using this, so to speak, method - and most likely very soon, in just a few days.

Don't chase too much

It will be much better if at the end of a certain stage of study you know 500 or 1000 words very well than 3000 - but poorly. Don’t let yourself be led into a dead end by teachers who will assure you that you need to first learn a certain number of words in order to “get into the swing of things.” Only you yourself can and must decide whether the vocabulary you have mastered is sufficient for your goals and interests.

Language learning experience shows that about 400 well-chosen words can cover up to 90 percent of the vocabulary you need for everyday communication purposes. In order to read, you will need more words, but many of them are only passive. Therefore, with knowledge of 1500 words, you can already understand fairly meaningful texts.

It is better to master the words that are most necessary and important to you than to constantly rush to learn new ones. “He who pursues too much risks missing everything,” says a Swedish proverb. “If you chase two hares, you won’t catch either,” the Russian proverb answers.

Vocabulary in oral speech

Very roughly speaking, about 40 well-chosen, high-frequency words will cover about 50% of word usage in everyday speech in any language;

• 200 words will cover about 80%;
• 300 words - approximately 85%;
• 400 words will cover about 90%;
• Well, 800-1000 words are about 95% of what would need to be said or heard in the most ordinary situation.

Thus, the right vocabulary helps you understand quite a lot with very little effort spent on cramming.

Example: if a total of 1000 words are spoken in an everyday conversation, then 500 of them, that is, 50%, will be covered by the 40 most common high-frequency words.

We emphasize that these percentages, of course, are not the result of exact calculations. They just give the most general concept about how many words you will need to feel confident when entering into a simple dialogue with a native speaker. In any case, there is no doubt that by correctly choosing from 400 to 800 words and remembering them well, you can feel confident in a simple conversation, since they will cover almost 100% of those words that you cannot do without. Of course, with others, less favorable conditions 400 words will cover only 80% of what you need to know - instead of 90 or 100%.

Reading vocabulary

When reading, having correctly chosen and well remembered about 80 of the most common, most frequent words, you will understand about 50% of a simple text;

• 200 words will cover approximately 60%;
• 300 words - 65%;
• 400 words - 70%;
• 800 words - approximately 80%;
• 1500 - 2000 words - about 90%;
• 3000 - 4000 - 95%;
• and 8,000 words will cover almost 99 percent of the written text.

Example: if you have a text in front of you with a volume of approximately 10 thousand words (this is approximately 40 printed pages), then, having learned the most necessary 400 words in advance, you will understand about 7000 words that are used in this text.

Let us note again that the figures we give are only indicative. Depending on various additional conditions, 50 words will cover up to 50 percent of the written text, but in other cases you will need to learn at least 150 words to get the same result.

Vocabulary: from 400 to 100,000 words

• 400 - 500 words - active vocabulary for language proficiency at a basic (threshold) level.
• 800 - 1000 words - active vocabulary in order to explain yourself; or passive reading vocabulary at a basic level.
• 1500 - 2000 words - active vocabulary, which is quite enough to ensure everyday communication throughout the day; or passive vocabulary sufficient for confident reading.
• 3000 - 4000 words - in general, enough for almost fluent reading of newspapers or literature in the specialty.
• About 8,000 words - provide complete communication for the average European. There is practically no need to know more words in order to communicate freely both orally and in writing, as well as read literature of any kind.
• 10,000-20,000 words - the active vocabulary of an educated European (in their native language).
• 50,000-100,000 words - the passive vocabulary of an educated European (in their native language).

It should be noted that vocabulary alone does not ensure free communication. At the same time, having mastered 1,500 correctly chosen words, with some additional training, you will be able to communicate almost freely.

As for professional terms, they usually do not present any particular difficulties, since in most cases this is an international vocabulary that is quite easy to master.

When you already know about 1500 words, you can start reading at a fairly decent level. With passive knowledge of 3,000 to 4,000 words, you will be fluent in reading literature in your specialty, at least in those areas where you are confident. In conclusion, we note that, according to calculations carried out by linguists based on a number of languages, the average educated European actively uses about 20,000 words (and half of them are quite rare). In this case, the passive vocabulary is at least 50,000 words. But all this concerns the native language.

Basic vocabulary

In the pedagogical literature you can find the terminological combination “basic vocabulary”. From my point of view, at the maximum level the vocabulary is about 8000 words. It seems to me that teaching large quantity words, except perhaps for some special purposes, are hardly necessary. Eight thousand words will be enough for full communication in any conditions.

When starting to learn a language, it would be wise to spend more short lists. Here are three levels that I have found in practice to provide a good guide for a beginner:

• level A("basic vocabulary"):

400-500 words. They are enough to cover approximately 90% of all word usage in everyday oral communication or about 70% of simple written text;

• level B(“minimum vocabulary”, “mini-level”):

800-1000 words. They are enough to cover approximately 95% of all word usage in everyday oral communication or about 80-85% of written text;

• level B("average vocabulary", "medium level"):

1500-2000 words. They are enough to cover approximately 95-100% of all word usage in everyday oral communication or about 90% of written text.

An example of a good dictionary of basic vocabulary can be considered the dictionary published by E. Klett in Stuttgart, 1971, under the title "Grundwortschatz Deutsch" ("Basic vocabulary German language"). It contains 2000 of the most necessary words in each of a select six languages: German, English, French, Spanish, Italian and Russian.

Eric W. Gunnemark, Swedish polyglot

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.

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 vocabulary 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 for learning a foreign language will help.

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.