Please respond: How many words which you known do you have?

Nearly everybody's vocabulary has two functions: the words one understands and the words one commonly uses. Shakespeare used about 29,000 different words in his Works and he probably would have known several thousand more that he didn't use. Most people, even well educated people, would probably only have about 15,000 words at their disposal and would probably use rather less than half that in day to day writing and even less in day to day conversation. Early in the 20th Century Charles Kay Ogden formulated a list of 850 English words which he called Basic English. The complete list of these words can easily be written on a sheet of notepaper! It is astonishing that such a small number of words could suffice but I have a copy of the New Testament written using just this vocabulary and it is perfectly readable, if a little odd-sounding at times. Of course, he assumed that any specialised or technical terms, such as medical words, would be added to the list as required. In 1953 a list called the General Service List was published, comprising 2000 words. It is estimated that someone knowing those words (and their various forms and variations) would understand approximately 90-95 percent of colloquial speech and 80-85 percent of common written texts. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_English http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_General_Service_List_of_English_Words Wikipedia publish many of their articles in Simple English. Look on the left under Languages. Here is the Basic English article in Simple English: http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_English

i am not a native speaker of english but in reality i never thought about how much words i can know in my mother-tongue or foreign language..but i think related to your native language you can know much more than 7000 words and this counts must be updated daily when you talk with somebody or read something and so on..so i guess they are much more..

honestly, i can't even estimate, much less count! every day we learn newthings, new words, new terms, new phrases... so the count is ever-growing. :)

Maybe I only know a few words, is not up to 100 words. I use a dictionary and translator, and I refine that a little more appropriate. Although I realize that the results have not been 100% correct. But I believe that in a moment later I will be better.