Generally what percentage of an individuals vocabulary is used on a daily basis? What is the average number of words that an English speaking person can recognize and/or use?
Somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred words comprise half of all spoken English. The other half is harder to nail down. Written English generally has far more words, but still the greatest portion of it relies on no more than two hundred words.
Generally adults know between 15,000 and 60,000 words with the later being considered a “very good” vocabulary. The total number of words in “English” becomes more a matter of definition of the terms word, and English. Technical terminology doubles the total vocabulary of defined words, from just over a hundred thousand, to nearly a quarter million. However, professional jargon adds even more words, or rather new definitions to existing words, and hypersuffixizations, and hyperprefixizations which increases the number again. A half million words is not indefensible for a working limit.
Children make do with a hundred words at age two in most cases, but learn three to five words every day for the next fifteen years. In the case of the extremes of vocabulary, that number would have to double. 10 x 365 x 20 would give you only a 75,000 word vocabulary by age 22, even assuming a precocious start. This process is not linear, however, and the average child learns ten new words a day for several years, and then fewer during later years. Precocious learners learn at an even more non linear rate.
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“When I was born I was so surprised I didn’t talk for a year and a half.” ~ Gracie Allen ~