How many English words do you know?
How many English words do you know? And how many words do you actually need to be able to speak in a foreign language? This last question is not only about the amount of words you have to know. When you would, for example, start learning English from a dictionary and you would just start learning all the words beginning with an A, certainly you would learn a lot of English words. But how usefull would that be? With this knowledge of words you could not start a proper conversation yet. Instead of learning a random collection of 1000 words, you’d better learn the 1000 words that are most frequently used first. When you know about a thousand of these common words (and you know some grammar too) you’ll be able to start a simple conversation.
But do you know exactly how many words you know at this moment? Here you can find a test where you can discover how many English words you probably know right now. In the 2000 level you can find an extract from the 2000 words most used in the English language. Next to these words you find a subscription of the meaning of the words. There you have to put in the number of the word that suits best with the subscription. If you know most of them, you probably have a lexicon of more than 2000 words. If you are finished with the first row, you can do the same for the next level.
You can find the test here:
Here you can find an interesting article about this topic:
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Comments
In other situations it’s sometimes possible to communicate without speaking any word. You only have to nod and hum. After having spoken to you, your interlocutor might say that it had been a pleasure talking to you because you acted like a very good listener (although you might not have understood a single word).
Dit you do the test @mherdge? What was your score?
I have been able to have 'conversations' with women when we couldn't speak a single word of each other's language. In particular, I remember being invited for tea in a Berber woman's home in a village in Morocco. To this day, I still can't work out how I was able to find out so much information without language. Somehow we managed though.
I'm not sure how convinced my new Hindi teacher will be tomorrow when we start classes!
2000 level
Score 17/18 (94%)
Prob. sets 3
3000 Level
Score 18/18 (100%)
5000 Level
Score 18/18 (100%)
UWL Level
Score 18/18 (100%)
10k Level
Score 18/18 (100%)
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It could be this one:-
1. blame
2. hide 2 keep away from sight
3. hit 3 have a bad effect on something
4. invite 4 ask
5. pour
6. spoil
Probably have a bad effect on something is "spoil", but if something is hit by something, it has a bad effect on it.
hit - be affected by (an unfortunate and unexpected circumstance or event).
The Network was badly hit by a DDOS attack.
2000 level
Score 18/18 (100%)
3000 Level
Score 17/18 (94%)
Prob. sets 6
5000 Level
Score 17/18 (94%)
Prob. sets 5
UWL Level
Score 17/18 (94%)
Prob. sets 3
10k Level
Score 6/18 (33%)
Prob. sets 1 2 3 4 5 6
I hampered on the 10k level. Those infrequently used words are apparently still difficult for me. That's why I still need a dictionary when I read scientific books. But it's good to realise that I probably know more than 5000 English words.
I'm sure @Xanthippe would agree.
2000 level
Score 18/18 (100%)3000 Level
Score 18/18 (100%)5000 Level
Score 18/18 (100%)UWL Level
Score 17/18 (94%)
Prob. sets 6 10k Level
Score 18/18 (100%)
2000 level
Score 18/18 (100%)
3000 Level
Score 18/18 (100%)
5000 Level
Score 17/18 (94%)
Prob. sets 6
UWL Level
Score 18/18 (100%)
10k Level
Score 16/18 (89%)
Prob. sets 5 6
From the instruction page:-
You must choose the right word to go with each meaning. Write the number of that word next to its meaning.
Score 18/18 (100%)
3000 Level
Score 18/18 (100%)
5000 Level
Score 15/18 (83%)
UWL Level
Score 15/18 (83%)
10k Level
Score 14/18 (78%)
Too many numbers! I still don't know the size of my vocabulary. It would be better to get the only approximate number.
If I knew so many words, I would twitter like a news reporter, but I can't link a couple of words instead. BTW How to say literally that I find it hard to talk?
1. I am not fluent enough.
2. ?
3. ?
2. I find it hard to talk.
3. I struggle to make conversation with people in English.
But I agree with what you say. It's not only about the vocabulary to be able to speak words. It’s about the relation among words; how they are combined. That’s often difficult because the rules for that differ in various languages.
Here you can find a list of phrasal verbs that might be helpful:
https://www.englishclub.com/vocabulary/phrasal-verbs-list.htm
http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2013/05/vocabulary-size
The test: http://testyourvocab.com/