# The biggest language **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 12, 2003, 1:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-biggest-language/181257 "2003-06-12T01:29:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Aceospades](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/848f3c/32.png) [@Aceospades](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aceospades)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2003, 1:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-biggest-language/181257/1 "2003-06-12T01:29:21Z")
What language has the most words in it and/or which language has the biggest vocabulary? ---
**Author:** ![commasense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/commasense/32/3017_2.png) [@commasense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/commasense)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2003, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-biggest-language/181257/2 "2003-06-12T01:49:59Z")
[Ask a Linguist](http://www.linguistlist.org/~ask-ling/archive-most-recent/msg08742.html) says: > [@](#): > > I keep telling the people who ask Ask-a-Linguist about which language has most words, second-most words, etc., that it is unfortunately not really a meaningful question, for one thing because what should count as a word is so debatable and language-dependent, and secondly because how big a nation’s biggest dictionary is has more to do with the resources that have historically been available for lexicography than to do with intrinsic properties of the language. China and England have been two of the world’s great and powerful civilizations, so Chinese and English benefit from very large dictionaries, containing many entries (in both cases) which few present-day speakers of the languages are familiar with. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2003, 1:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-biggest-language/181257/3 "2003-06-12T01:51:18Z")
English is generally cited (see “The Story of English”) as having the biggest vocabulary. The average English dictionary is much thicker than those of other languages. The main reason is that English borrowed feely from many other languages, giving it a wealth of synonyms. ---
**Author:** ![Nichol\_storm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Nichol\_storm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nichol_storm)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2003, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-biggest-language/181257/4 "2003-06-12T02:09:52Z")
I’m afraid your question doesn’t really have an answer. Even just defining what is meant by vocabulary is tricky – do you mean root-words, words in current usage, or all known words for a language, even the ones that went out of use hundreds of years ago, etc? Would you count loan words and variations of a word, such as probable, probability, and probabilistic? No one knows the entire lexicon of every language on earth (and many languages don’t even have dictionaries!) so comparison would be nearly impossible even if you could define what you mean by vocabulary. Productive word formation mechanisms like compounding in German would produce theoritically infinite vocabularies. Inuit is an polysynthetic incorporating language that incorporates adverbs, adjectives and objects into the verb, creating an astonishing number of derived words. The Merriam-Webster 3rd International Dictionary from 1961 claims 450,000 words for English, not counting the Addenda, but should we count _all_ these words as English? Do compounds like doghouse really count as separate words? Should loanwords like sauna (Finnish), loot (Hindi), and fiance (French) be included as English words? What about extinct words like Chaucer’s whylom or words used only in highly specialized circumstances and are almost never heard outside their venue? .:Nichol:. ---
**Author:** ![Aceospades](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/848f3c/32.png) [@Aceospades](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aceospades)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2003, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-biggest-language/181257/5 "2003-06-12T02:10:03Z")
can i get a number for how meny words in the english language or how many words listed in the most Comprehensive Dictionary of English language ? ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2003, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-biggest-language/181257/6 "2003-06-12T03:05:29Z")
> [@](#): > > can i get a number for how meny words in the english language First of all please define your terms. What, precisely, is a word? This is not as easy as you might think. Here are just a few of the problems you will encounter. Think about plurals - are **cat** and **cats** two seperate words, or variations of a single word? **Mouse** and **mice**? **Grouse** and **grouse**? Think about prefixes and suffixes - Are **cover** and **uncover** - the same word, or different? They are essentially two different forms of the same word. Should every possible form count as a seperate word, or should they be treated as variants of the same word? Then what about **undiscovered?** which has a meaning so far removed from **cover** that most people would count it as a seperate word. Think about words that have more than one meaning? For example, **second** (right after first), **second** (agree with a proposal), **second** (one sixtieth of a minute) and several other meanings. Are they the same word, or different? Think about when a word could be different parts of speech, for example **sail** could be a noun or a verb. Are they the same word, or different? Once you have decided what you mean by ‘word’ then you have to work out how many are ‘in the language’ And there you have some problems. Is an old word that you would only encounter in a Shakespeare play still part of the language? Even if only a historian understands what it means? Then you have a problem determining how ‘English’ a particular word is: Is **dojo** an English word? It has been recently imported from Japanese. And if you don’t count that, should you also disqualify **beef** and **pork**? They are French words. Then, should we consider slang, abbreviations, acronyms, brand names, and so on. These are just some of the problems you will encounter seeking a meaningful answer. It is even more difficulot when you compare different languages. For example, English has singular and plural nouns, but Japanese does not distinguish. Latin has up to 10 different forms of each noun. Should we conclude that Latin has more words than English, and Japanese has fewer? I hope this makes it plain how your question is simply unanswerable. Sorry. ---
**Author:** ![Achernar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e274bd/32.png) [@Achernar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Achernar)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2003, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-biggest-language/181257/7 "2003-06-12T03:29:20Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by peter morris \* > Latin has up to 10 different forms of each noun. Can you name one? As far as I know, every declension repeats at least one form. The question is not unanswerable, but it’s probably prohibitively difficult. It would not be too hard to define what a “word” is by answering every one of the questions in your post. But **Aceospades** also asked how many words are in the largest English dictionary, and that’s easy to answer. [There are 615,100 in the OED second edition](http://www.oed.com/public/inside/funfacts.htm). ---
**Author:** ![Aceospades](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/848f3c/32.png) [@Aceospades](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aceospades)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2003, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-biggest-language/181257/8 "2003-06-15T21:41:39Z")
Thanks **achernar** (and everyone else). I’m actually asking this for a Russian friend who wanted to know if English was “bigger” then Russian. I agree with everyone else that my original question needs to be more specific.