Fiona Shipley Transcription is in the business of words – the very definition of transcription is to put thoughts, speech or data into written form. It’s what we do – and we have an excellent reputation for doing it well.
So it’s pretty much a given that we’re interested in the English language. It’s at the very core of our business, and we love that it’s a truly fascinating language with all its nuances and idiosyncrasies!
Have you ever wondered just how many words the average person knows? We’ve been delving into this and there are some interesting results out there.
The English language is believed to have the largest vocabulary of any language at 800,000 words. According to an article published in The Economist in 2013 whiich based on the results of over 2 million surveys taken on the testyourvocab website, most adults have a vocabulary range of 20,000 to 35,000 words. By the time you are just 4 years old, your vocabulary will be about 5,000 words, rising to 10,000 by the age of 8. In order to be able to speak a language fluently you need to have a basic vocabulary of 2,000 to 2,500 words. And adults continue to learn on average one new word every day until they reach middle age.
Of course in language, as in everything else, not everyone is equal.
It’s believed that Victor Hugo, the French French poet, novelist, and dramatist used an active vocabulary of 38,000 words! William Shakespeare’s vocabulary was also exceptional, with his masterpieces combined containing 25,000 unique words. He was very much an architect of the modern English language, with so many of the words used throughout his work still in active use today. We have Shakespeare to thank for phrases such as “with bated breath” and “fight fire with fire” and his overall enrichment of the English language is undeniable.
The English language is very much a growing language and is constantly developing – in fact, apparently a new word is born every 98 minutes!
Do you know just how extensive your vocabulary is? Why not take the test yourself to find out – head to http://testyourvocab.com/