How many words are there in Spanish vs English?
So to round things off, figure there are around 150,000 "official" Spanish words. In contrast, the Oxford English Dictionary has about 600,000 words, but that includes words that are no longer in use. It has full definitions of around 230,000 words.
Even some words stop being used in that period of analysis! The RAE indicates that Spanish has more than 93,000 words, and about 19,000 of those words are Americanisms.
English has roughly twice as many words as Spanish. The Oxford Dictionary has twice as many entries as the Spanish Royal Academy Dictionary. The reasons are simple: English is doubled, I mean that English has almost always a Latin form and a Germanic form for every concept.
Korean. Dictionaries are regarded as authoritative collections of words in a given language, so they might seem like a good source to use for answering this question. It looks like Korean tops the list with over a million words!
Cognates are words in two languages that share a similar meaning, spelling, and pronunciation. 30-40% of all words in English have a related word in Spanish and this guide provides a helpful list of cognates in Spanish and English.
Number of Words in the English Language
The Oxford English Dictionary estimates that there are around 170,000 words in current use, with an additional 47,000 obsolete words. Compared to other languages, English has a vast vocabulary, with only a few languages having more words.
Linguists do not agree on what it means to be fluent. If you think about native-level fluency, you'll need to master between 20,000 and 40,000 words, and as you can see the margin is quite large. If you want to have a basic conversation, experts say that you'll just need around 3,000 words.
So Far One three-letter word does much of the heavy lifting in the English language. The little word "run" — in its verb form alone — has 645 distinct meanings.
It's one of the fastest spoken languages in the world. According to one study, Spanish native speakers speak 25 percent faster compared to native English speakers. A rich legacy and the relative ease of learning make it a very popular lingo.
One the one hand, Spanish could be considered a richer and more complex language than English for at least these reasons: Spanish, for example, is a syllable-timed language and features, unlike English, which is stressed-timed language, two verbs to be, a subjunctive mood, and features nouns, pronouns and adjectives ...
Which language did God speak?
In Hindu religion, "speech" Vāc, i.e. the language of liturgy, now known as Sanskrit, is considered the language of the gods called "Devabani". Later Hindu scholarship, in particular the Mīmāṃsā school of Vedic hermeneutics, distinguished Vāc from Śábda, a distinction comparable to the Saussurian langue and parole.
The English language is believed to have more words than any other language in the world.
It is clear that Arabic is the basis for hundreds of words across dozens of languages. As we continue to examine why it may be the richest language in words, let us take a look at the origin of the Arabic language.
Some linguists believe that 800 words are enough to hold a basic conversation. However, your vocabulary should be over 8,000 words if you want to speak a language as well as a native speaker.
1. Norwegian. This may come as a surprise, but we have ranked Norwegian as the easiest language to learn for English speakers. Norwegian is a member of the Germanic family of languages — just like English!
| Characteristic | Share of Hispanic population |
|---|---|
| English "well" | 12.1% |
| English "not well" | 10.1% |
| English "not at all" | 5.4% |
| Speak only English | 31.8% |
Meet Toki Pona, a language with the fewest words in the world. It is known for its small vocabulary, simplicity, and ease of acquisition. So, how many words does Toki Pona have? A total of 120!
Thornbury (2002) mentions that students need approximately: Between 1,000 to 2,000 high-frequency words for basic conversation and everyday texts. More or less 8,000 words for advanced conversation. In the region of 10,000 to 20,000-word families (excluding fixed phrases and expressions) to read at a university level.
Generally speaking, knowing an average of 2000-3000 words should be enough for everyday conversations and basic understanding (A2-B1 level). To become proficient in English, you need a vocabulary of about 5000+ words.
5,000 words constitute the active vocabulary of native speakers without higher education. 10,000 words constitute the active vocabulary of native speakers with higher education.
How big is the Spanish vocabulary?
| Language | Approx. no. of headwords |
|---|---|
| Spanish | 93,000 |
| Kurdish | 93,000 |
| Soranî | 92,000 |
| Spanish | 90,000 |
From Oxford Dictionaries: The answer is not really, because the usual rules of English spelling outlaw triple letters. We put hyphens in words that contain three of the same letters in a row, so as to break the letters up, e.g. bee-eater, bell-like, cross-section, cross-subsidize, joss-stick, and shell-less.
- Rural. ...
- Sixth. ...
- Sesquipedalian. ...
- Phenomenon. ...
- Onomatopoeia. ...
- Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. ...
- Worcestershire.
The longest word in any of the major English language dictionaries is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis (45 letters), a word that refers to a lung disease contracted from the inhalation of very fine silica particles, specifically from a volcano; medically, it is the same as silicosis.
That's because, unlike other languages, each syllable in Spanish is pronounced with the same length and intensity. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. It's very precise, very regular, and sounds very fast. But, the fact that each syllable is pronounced (in Standard Spanish) very precisely, it's relatively easy to understand.
