The words in the mental cupboard
Children are to be offered
lessons on how to speak English formally
amid fears that many are
suffering from "word poverty", it has been reported.
But how many words do people
tend to know and use?
Do people know more words
than they actually use?
And is having a large
vocabulary something you learn or have a natural ability for?
These are burning issues in
the worlds of linguistics and education.
On Monday it was reported
that children in England will have lessons in formal language
amid fears that some are
suffering from stunted vocabularies.
US company Global Language
Monitor (GLM) believes that the one millionth word
will be added to the English
language in mid-June.
While there is agreement that
a word becomes a word when it is used by one person
and understood by another,
grammarians and lexicographers stand divided
when deciding which to
include when calculating a total.
Obamamania, bankster and
bloggerati are just some of the "brand new words"
GLM has been tracking.
The operation, based in
Austin, Texas, says 25,000 citations in the worldwide media,
social networking sites and
elsewhere are its benchmark for a word to be included in its total.
They estimate a new word is
created every 98 minutes.
The English language is
likely to contain the most words of all languages, according to the Oxford
English Dictionary, and estimates for the number of words range from one to two
million.
Agreement will probably never
be reached over whether or not to include words used in botany
or chemistry, let alone
slang, dialects and influences from foreign shores.
Some areas GLM does not
include are product names and chemicals and Paul Payack,
president and chief word
analyst, says the 600,000 species of fungus are not in.
So, can a precise word total
ever be known?
No, says Professor David
Crystal, known chiefly for his research in English language studies
and author of around 100
books on the subject.
"It's like asking how
many stars are there in the sky. It's impossible to answer," he said.
An easier question to answer,
he maintains, is the size of the average person's vocabulary.
He suggests taking a sample
of about 20 or 30 pages from a medium-sized dictionary,
one which contains about
100,000 entries or 1,000 to 1,500 pages.
Tick off the ones you know
and count them. Then multiply that by the number of pages
and you will discover how
many words you know. Most people vastly underestimate their total.
"Most people know half
the words - about 50,000 - easily. A reasonably educated person
about 75,000 and a really
cool, smart person well, maybe all of them but that is rather unusual.
"An ordinary person, one
who has not been to university say,
would know about 35,000 quite
easily."
The formula can be used to
calculate the number of words a person uses,
but a person's active
language will always be less than their passive,
the difference being about a
third.
Prof Crystal says exposure to
reading will obviously expand a person's vocabulary
but the level of a person's
education does not necessarily decide things.
"A person with a poor
education perhaps may not be able to read or read much,
but they will know words and
may have a very detailed vocabulary about pop songs or motorbikes.
"I've met children that
you could class as having a poor education
and they knew hundreds of
words about skateboards that you won't find in a dictionary.
"We must avoid cultural
elitism."
His research led him to ask
people how many different words appeared on average
in a copy of The Sun
newspaper. All respondents came back with a low figure.
The Sun v The Bible
After counting a paper picked
from random he found there to be about 8,000.
"That's the same as the
King James version of the Bible.
"It is not very varied
and names don't count but you see,
people see headlines like
'Gotcha!' and make a judgement."
But surely, the perfect
outlet for having a vast vocabulary is Scrabble.
Allan Simmons, crowned UK
champion last year, says he can recognise around 100,000
of the 160,000 words of nine
letters or under included on the Scrabble list.
"I've always liked
words, their meanings and dictionaries.
Patterns of words are
interesting - I see it as an art form.
"I have a good memory
and a lot of words I learn just for the game although that is a bit
artificial."
And while the language grows,
words will fall out of use by being replaced.
Experts predict words like
"stab" or "throw", have a language lifetime of about 800 to
1,000 years whereas the words "three", "five",
"I" and "who" may last anything up to 20,000 years.
So as new words are created
at such a pace will we ever keep track? Worry not, says Prof Crystal.
"Of course words become
obsolete when they are not used in everyday speech.
Look at Shakespeare's plays.
But words never, ever get forgotten."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8013859.stm
A practical overview of Turbo Charged Reading YouTube
How
to choose a book. A Turbo Charged Reading YouTube
Advanced Reading Skills Perhaps you’d like to join my FaceBook group ?
Perhaps
you’d like to check out my sister blogs:
www.innermindworking.blogspot.com gives many ways
for you to work with the stresses of life
www.ourinnerminds.blogspot.com which takes
advantage of the experience and expertise of others.
www.happyartaccidents.blogspot.com
just for fun.
To
quote the Dr Seuss himself, “The more that you read, the more things you will
know.
The
more that you learn; the more places you'll go.”
No comments:
Post a Comment
Your opinions, experience and questions are welcome. M'reen