Aries and Gemini compatibility: which of us will be serious. Vocabulary of native Russian speakers: the influence of age and education How many words a person knows on average

Scientists estimate the vocabulary of an adult to be between 3,000 and 10,000 words. Guess what determines the number of words used by a person. Make four or five guesses.

Answer

First of all, it all depends on how well-read a person is. At present, the younger generation reads very little, and therefore sometimes they cannot connect two words. That is why many very often use a mat, almost every word, and all because a person does not have enough words to describe his thoughts and feelings.

Of course, from the circle of friends, because if you communicate with people who, apart from swearing, cannot say anything, then you won’t say anything smart either. If smart people surround you, you can always hear smart words and statements from them.

Thus, the vocabulary of each of us, of course, depends on:

1) The degree of enthusiasm for reading books (the more he reads, the more vocabulary).

2) Circle of communication (a person who communicates with candidates of science is somewhat ahead of people who communicate with average teenagers).

3) Leisure (a person who prefers to watch scientific programs and documentaries in his spare time still has a “strong” lexicon than someone who watches entertainment TV shows).

4) Profession (a teacher who can replenish words every day with neologisms of students has a more voluminous vocabulary than an engineer working alone).

5) The quality (availability) of education (a person with three higher educations will be ahead of a preschooler in the amount of words used in speech).

6) Age (experience), the older the person, the more words he heard, remembered, learned, studied, “acquired”.

The richest and most beautiful Russian language makes it possible for people who speak it to express themselves in a variety of ways. The accuracy of wording and beautiful speech depend on the vocabulary that 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.

According to the scientific vocabulary is called a lexicon, meaning words familiar to an individual, group or included in the language. It is conditionally divided into;

Active. The first group includes words used every day. They are included in both written and spoken language. A sign of an active lexicon is free use that does not require additional effort.
Passive. Passive words include understandable words that occur 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 and so on. It is hardly possible to draw clear boundaries between these groups. They are rather shaky and oscillate to one side or the other. With growing up and mental development, the vocabulary grows.

So, if a child going to the first grade speaks two thousand words, then in the last one 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 belong to the passive stock.

Erudite people sometimes own even 50,000 words. But, only a small part is used daily in communication. The rest of the lexicon is used only with intellectuals like it.

Vocabulary exercises

The following exercises are done in writing or orally.

Nouns. They tell a little 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 up to the cherished spruce, gesticulating and eloquently cherishing lovely tender dandelions. Pasha follows nearby, dragging a comfortable chrome-plated lantern, often catching a nimble twittering with extravagant humorous language.
Monophone. Make up your own speech, the words of which begin with one letter. Each of them is connected with each other, even if the meaning suffers.

It is not easy to complete each of the exercises. But the words gradually move from the passive lexicon to the active one and its replenishment takes place.

Lexicon expansion techniques without extra time

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

Therefore, it is desirable to communicate with dissimilar people. These are friends, neighbors, fellow students, comrades in the gym. People you meet on the Internet in forums and social networking pages, fellow travelers and vendors also serve as an opportunity for communication and as a way to expand your speech.
Another effective way to replenish your vocabulary, which does not require special time, is 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 people (for people who perceive information better by ear). A variety of books are sold in this format: novels, aphorisms, and philosophical teachings. Having recorded on a flash drive, you can now not be bored in a traffic jam, but listen to a fascinating story. It is convenient to listen to audio books before going to bed.

Replenishment of the lexicon with the allocation of time

The following activities will help you increase your vocabulary.

Reading. Reading is the richest source of information. Books, newspapers, online publications, magazines - everywhere there are inexhaustible reserves of replenishment of the lexicon. It is advisable to set aside an hour a day for 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. The more a person enriches his speech, the better connections are made, and the easier it is to recall words from memory.
Games. There are interesting exciting linguistic games: charades, puzzles and the like. When they are guessed, they are involuntarily interested in words and meaning.
Diary. Another useful activity is keeping a diary. When it is impossible to go to foreign language courses, they write for themselves. This is a good way to improve the vocabulary, as taking notes formulates thoughts that are in the emotional and motivational areas.
Memorization. Memorization makes it possible to bring new words into the active stock. For this, a way of retelling what was heard, memorizing verses and definitions is used. It is one of the most effective methods of mastering new knowledge.

For this it is important:

daily include new words in speech;
use a notebook, entering intricate statements, words, phrases with clever expressions;
learn the essence of new words by adding a visualization technique;
memorize poems, quotes, sayings and so on.

To improve the vocabulary, conscious actions are needed. To achieve beautiful speech requires constant training. Ignoring new words will not give them a chance to get into the active or passive vocabulary. It turns out that those who want to expand their vocabulary and enrich their language should make regular strong-willed efforts for this.

How many words do you think the average person knows? Everyone remembers the well-known excerpt from the immortal work of E. Petrov and I. Ilf "The Twelve Chairs" about the comparison of the vocabulary of Shakespeare and Ellochka the Cannibal. The same quote can be cited as a confirmation of the hypothesis that the lexicon of a person depends on what this person is like. For example, an uneducated person or a small child will be several hundred; literate - several thousand.

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

What is a lexicon?

From ancient Greek means "word", "turn of speech". The exact lexicon sounds like this: a combination of words of a particular language, parts of words or a language that a particular person or a certain group of people speaks. Vocabulary is the central part of the language that 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 it comes to a certain set of words that a person uses daily in his speech, which he uses to express his feelings and thoughts, this implies an active vocabulary. The use 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), finds out in a readable text, then passive vocabulary is meant. 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 the active and passive dictionaries are individual for each person. It depends on the age, profession, general cultural level, personal qualities, tastes and even the place of residence of a person. According to statistics, the active vocabulary of an adult with a higher education is seven to nine thousand words. Passive - twenty-twenty-four thousand. Although in everyday communication we manage with only one or two thousand words. It is said 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.

If you are now looking at the Oxford Dictionary and thinking, “I will never learn that many words!” - distract from sad thoughts and read this article. How many words do you really need to know? You may be pleasantly surprised!

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Word, show your passport!

English students often ask, "How many words do I have to learn to be able to hold a conversation on any topic?" Good question, but before answering it, let me ask you another one: what do you think? A question to which there is no intelligible answer. Why? It is impossible to count the number of words in a language for one simple reason - it is difficult to decide what to consider as a word.

It is claimed, for example, that for the word "set" the Oxford Dictionary gives 464 interpretations. Should we consider a polysemantic word as one word or each interpretation as a separate word? And what about (phrasal verbs): “set up”, “set about”, “set apart”, etc.? And what about the so-called open compounds - words like "hot dog", "ice cream", "real estate"? Add to this the singular and plural forms, verb conjugations, different endings, prefixes and suffixes - and you will understand why it is so problematic to answer how many words there are in the English language.

In fact, the question should be put like this: “Do you know how many words are in the largest dictionary of the English language?” If you roughly imagine the number of words in a language, it can be compared with the number of words used 90-95% of the time in everyday speech and in the news.

Talk less, work more

In 1960, the famous American children's writer Theodor Seuss Geisel (better known under the pseudonym Dr. Seuss, author of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, The Cat in the Hat, The Lorax, etc.) published the book Green Eggs and Ham. The book was written in just 50 words and was the result of a dispute between Seuss and his publisher, Bennett Cerf. The publisher believed that Seuss would not be able to create a finished work in such harsh conditions (before that, Seuss had already written "The Cat in the Hat", which featured 225 words).

If it's possible to write a book in just 50 words, does that mean we don't need 40,000 words to communicate with each other? Note, however, that according to Susie Dent, a lexicographer, the average active vocabulary of an adult English speaker is about 20,000 words, the passive one is about 40,000 words.

What is the difference between active and passive vocabulary? In simple terms, active vocabulary includes words that you can remember on your own and apply. As for the passive vocabulary, these are those words that you recognize, the meaning of which you know, but which you are not able to use yourself.

How many words do you know sir?

And here we come to the most interesting. On the one hand, an adult native English speaker has an active vocabulary of about 20,000 words. On the other hand, The Reading Teacher's Book of Lists claims that the first 25 words are used in 33% of everyday written texts, the first 100 words in 50%, and the first thousand words occur in 89% of such texts!

Thus, we can safely say that only 3,000 words cover about 95% of texts on general topics (news articles, blog entries, etc.). Liu Na and Nation proved that 3000 is the approximate number of words we need to know in order to understand the rest from the context when reading unsimplified texts.

Count yourself!

The Oxford English Dictionary contains 171,476 common words. 95% of general texts cover a vocabulary of only 3,000 words. That's 1.75% of all words!

That's right: knowing 1.75% of the English vocabulary, you can understand 95% of what you read. This is only 7.5% of the average passive vocabulary of a native speaker (40,000 words). Isn't it great?

Active vocabulary includes words that are used in speech and writing.

Passive Vocabulary includes words that a person recognizes by reading and listening, but does not use them himself in speaking and writing. The passive vocabulary is several times larger than the active one.

Vocabulary of the average person

Russian language

"Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language" by V. I. Dahl has about 200 thousand words. The most common words, according to the "Frequency Dictionary of the Russian Language" edited by L. N. Zasorina, are about 40 thousand words, and a little more than 9 thousand words have the highest frequency, covering more than 90% of the texts processed when compiling the dictionary. According to modern estimates, the vocabulary of a high school student is about 5,000 words. A highly educated person knows about 8,000 words. It is interesting that Pushkin's Dictionary of Language, which contains the words used by the classic, contains an unsurpassed figure so far - approximately 24 thousand words. The unpublished Dictionary of the Language of V. I. Lenin, according to some sources, was supposed to contain about 30 thousand words.

English language

According to the official data of the Oxford Dictionary, there are 250,000 words in the English language and about 615,000 word formations. But some researchers argue that when counting English words, it is necessary to take into account all neologisms, including words from Internet blogs and other unofficial resources, as well as words used only in varieties of English, for example, in China and Japan. So, the company Global Language Monitor counted 986 thousand words in English.

Japanese

The Japanese language contains about 50,000 characters. The active vocabulary of the Japanese is formed by the Ministry of Education, which recommends to its compatriots 1850 hieroglyphs for everyday use, of which 881 are studied in primary and secondary schools. The average Japanese uses 400 characters in everyday life, while newspapers and magazines use 3,000 characters.