English in most word written

Have you heard language experts say that English has more words than other languages? The claim is made but it’s practically impossible to verify.

Steven Frank, the author of The Pen Commandments claims that English has 500,000 words with German having about 135,000 and French having fewer than 100,000.

But wait…

A blog post for The Economist agrees that English is rich in vocabulary, but comparisons with other languages can’t be made for several reasons.

The simplest problem in comparing the size of different languages is inflection.

Do we count “run”, “runs” and “ran” as three separate words? Another problem is multiple meanings. Do we count “run” the verb and “run” the noun as one word or two? What about “run” as in the long run of a play on Broadway? According to a recent NPR article, “run” has at least 645 different meanings!

When counting a language’s words do we count compounds? Is “every day” one word or two? Are the names of new chemical compounds words? Answering the question, “What is the richest language?” becomes more and more complicated.

Estoy, Estás, Está—One Word or Three?

Some languages inflect much more than English. The Spanish verb “estar” has dozens of forms—estoy, estás, está, “I am,” “you are,” “he is” and so on.

Does that make Spanish richer in word count?

Some languages inflect much less (Chinese is famously ending-free). So, whether we count inflected forms will have a huge influence on final counts.

Moreover, many languages habitually build long words from short ones.

German is obvious; it is a trifle to coin a new compound word for a new situation. For example, is the German Unabhängigkeitserklärung—declaration of independence—one word?

Given the possibilities for compounds, German would quickly outstrip English, with the constant addition of new legitimate German “words”, which Germans would accept without blinking.

A Sentence that Translates as One Word

The Turkish language is similar in this way.

Turkish not only crams words together but does so in ways that make whole, meaningful sentences.

“Were you one of those people whom we could not make into a Czechoslovak?” translates as one word in Turkish.

You write it without spaces, pronounce it in one breath in speaking, it can’t be interrupted with digressions, and so forth.

Counting the Words in the Dictionary

Another way of measuring the vocabulary in a language and comparing counts is by counting the number of words listed in a standard authoritative dictionary in that language.

From a list on Wikipedia, here’s one such comparison. This is a list of dictionaries considered authoritative or complete by approximate number of total words or headwords, included.

These figures do not include entries with senses for different word classes (such as noun and adjective) and homographs.

Wikipedia says it’s possible to count the number of entries in a dictionary, but it’s not possible to count the number of words in a language:

Language	Words in the Dictionary
Korean	1,100,373
Japanese	500,000
Italian	260,000
English	171,476
Russian	150,000
Spanish	93,000
Chinese	85,568

Which language has the most words? Maybe it’s English.

The Oxford Dictionary says it’s quite probable that English has more words than most comparable world languages. The reason is historical.

English was originally a Germanic language, related to Dutch and German. English shares much of its grammar and basic vocabulary with those languages.

After the Norman Conquest in 1066 English was hugely influenced by Norman French, which became the language of the ruling class for a considerable period, and by Latin, which was the language of scholarship and of the Church.

Very large numbers of French and Latin words entered the language. This melding of languages means English has a much larger vocabulary than either the Germanic languages or the members of the Romance language family according to Oxford.

English builds its vocabulary through a willingness to accept foreign words. And because English became an international language, it has absorbed vocabulary from a large number of other sources.

So, which language is richest in words?

Let us ask a different, and we think more important question:

Does it really matter?

Whatever languages you translate or interpret in—Chinese, Japanese, Russian, sign language, or others—you are bound to have a rich body of words to work with.

But if you want to dig deeper into the subject, check out Part 2 on the Arabic language.

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Sources:

Economist

Oxford Dictionaries

Wikipedia

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The 100 Most Common Written Words in English

Most frequency lists incorrectly provide the “most common words” in English, with no distinction made between written and spoken vocabulary. The 100 most commonly used words in speech differ significantly, and this distinction applies to any target language.

The top 25 words listed below account for around one-third of all printed text in English. The first 100 words account for half of all written material, and the first 300 words account for roughly 65 per cent of all written material in English. Articles and tense conjugations that are often skipped or learnt for recognition (understanding) but not recalled in several languages (production). Here is the list of the top 100 Words that are mostly used in English.

List of Commonly Used Words

1. the
2. of
3. and
4. a
5. to
6. in
7. is
8. you
9. that
10. it
11. he
12. was
13. for
14. on
15. are
16. as
17. with
18. his
19. they
20. I
21. at
22. be
23. this
24. have
25. from
26. or
27. one
28. had
29. by
30. word
31. but
32. not
33. what
34. all
35. were
36. we
37. when
38. your
39. can
40. said
41. there
42. use
43. an
44. each
45. which
46. she
47. do
48. how
49. their
50. if
51. will
52. up
53. other
54. about
55. out
56. many
57. then
58. them
59. these
60. so
61. some
62. her
63. would
64. make
65. like
66. him
67. into
68. time
69. has
70. look
71. two
72. more
73. write
74. go
75. see
76. number
77. no
78. way
79. could
80. people
81. my
82. than
83. first
84. water
85. been
86. call
87. who
88. oil
89. its
90. now
91. find
92. long
93. down
94. day
95. did
96. get
97. come
98. made
99. may
100. part.

Source: http://www.fourhourworkweek.com

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Studies that estimate and rank the most common words in English examine texts written in English. Perhaps the most comprehensive such analysis is one that was conducted against the Oxford English Corpus (OEC), a massive text corpus that is written in the English language.

In total, the texts in the Oxford English Corpus contain more than 2 billion words.^[1] The OEC includes a wide variety of writing samples, such as literary works, novels, academic journals, newspapers, magazines, Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, blogs, chat logs, and emails.^[2]

Another English corpus that has been used to study word frequency is the Brown Corpus, which was compiled by researchers at Brown University in the 1960s. The researchers published their analysis of the Brown Corpus in 1967. Their findings were similar, but not identical, to the findings of the OEC analysis.

According to The Reading Teacher’s Book of Lists, the first 25 words in the OEC make up about one-third of all printed material in English, and the first 100 words make up about half of all written English.^[3] According to a study cited by Robert McCrum in The Story of English, all of the first hundred of the most common words in English are of Old English origin,^[4] except for «people», ultimately from Latin «populus», and «because», in part from Latin «causa».

Some lists of common words distinguish between word forms, while others rank all forms of a word as a single lexeme (the form of the word as it would appear in a dictionary). For example, the lexeme be (as in to be) comprises all its conjugations (is, was, am, are, were, etc.), and contractions of those conjugations.^[5] These top 100 lemmas listed below account for 50% of all the words in the Oxford English Corpus.^[1]

100 most common words

A list of 100 words that occur most frequently in written English is given below, based on an analysis of the Oxford English Corpus (a collection of texts in the English language, comprising over 2 billion words).^[1] A part of speech is provided for most of the words, but part-of-speech categories vary between analyses, and not all possibilities are listed. For example, «I» may be a pronoun or a Roman numeral; «to» may be a preposition or an infinitive marker; «time» may be a noun or a verb. Also, a single spelling can represent more than one root word. For example, «singer» may be a form of either «sing» or «singe». Different corpora may treat such difference differently.

The number of distinct senses that are listed in Wiktionary is shown in the polysemy column. For example, «out» can refer to an escape, a removal from play in baseball, or any of 36 other concepts. On average, each word in the list has 15.38 senses. The sense count does not include the use of terms in phrasal verbs such as «put out» (as in «inconvenienced») and other multiword expressions such as the interjection «get out!», where the word «out» does not have an individual meaning.^[6] As an example, «out» occurs in at least 560 phrasal verbs^[7] and appears in nearly 1700 multiword expressions.^[8]

The table also includes frequencies from other corpora. Note that as well as usage differences, lemmatisation may differ from corpus to corpus – for example splitting the prepositional use of «to» from the use as a particle. Also the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) list includes dispersion as well as frequency to calculate rank.

Word	Parts of speech	OEC rank	COCA rank^[9]	Dolch level	Polysemy
the	Article	1	1	Pre-primer	12
be	Verb	2	2	Primer	21
to	Preposition	3	7, 9	Pre-primer	17
of	Preposition	4	4	Grade 1	12
and	Conjunction	5	3	Pre-primer	16
a	Article	6	5	Pre-primer	20
in	Preposition	7	6, 128, 3038	Pre-primer	23
that	Conjunction et al.	8	12, 27, 903	Primer	17
have	Verb	9	8	Primer	25
I	Pronoun	10	11	Pre-primer	7
it	Pronoun	11	10	Pre-primer	18
for	Preposition	12	13, 2339	Pre-primer	19
not	Adverb et al.	13	28, 2929	Pre-primer	5
on	Preposition	14	17, 155	Primer	43
with	Preposition	15	16	Primer	11
he	Pronoun	16	15	Primer	7
as	Adverb, conjunction, et al.	17	33, 49, 129	Grade 1	17
you	Pronoun	18	14	Pre-primer	9
do	Verb, noun	19	18	Primer	38
at	Preposition	20	22	Primer	14
this	Determiner, adverb, noun	21	20, 4665	Primer	9
but	Preposition, adverb, conjunction	22	23, 1715	Primer	17
his	Possessive pronoun	23	25, 1887	Grade 1	6
by	Preposition	24	30, 1190	Grade 1	19
from	Preposition	25	26	Grade 1	4
they	Pronoun	26	21	Primer	6
we	Pronoun	27	24	Pre-primer	6
say	Verb et al.	28	19	Primer	17
her	Possessive pronoun	29, 106	42	Grade 1	3
she	Pronoun	30	31	Primer	7
or	Conjunction	31	32	Grade 2	11
an	Article	32	(a)	Grade 1	6
will	Verb, noun	33	48, 1506	Primer	16
my	Possessive pronoun	34	44	Pre-primer	5
one	Noun, adjective, et al.	35	51, 104, 839	Pre-primer	24
all	Adjective	36	43, 222	Primer	15
would	Verb	37	41	Grade 2	13
there	Adverb, pronoun, et al.	38	53, 116	Primer	14
their	Possessive pronoun	39	36	Grade 2	2
what	Pronoun, adverb, et al.	40	34	Primer	19
so	Conjunction, adverb, et al.	41	55, 196	Primer	18
up	Adverb, preposition, et al.	42	50, 456	Pre-primer	50
out	Preposition	43	64, 149	Primer	38
if	Conjunction	44	40	Grade 3	9
about	Preposition, adverb, et al.	45	46, 179	Grade 3	18
who	Pronoun, noun	46	38	Primer	5
get	Verb	47	39	Primer	37
which	Pronoun	48	58	Grade 2	7
go	Verb, noun	49	35	Pre-primer	54
me	Pronoun	50	61	Pre-primer	10
when	Adverb	51	57, 136	Grade 1	11
make	Verb, noun	52	45	Grade 2 [as «made»]	48
can	Verb, noun	53	37, 2973	Pre-primer	18
like	Preposition, verb	54	74, 208, 1123, 1684, 2702	Primer	26
time	Noun	55	52	Dolch list of 95 nouns	14
no	Determiner, adverb	56	93, 699, 916, 1111, 4555	Primer	10
just	Adjective	57	66, 1823		14
him	Pronoun	58	68		5
know	Verb, noun	59	47		13
take	Verb, noun	60	63		66
people	Noun	61	62		9
into	Preposition	62	65		10
year	Noun	63	54		7
your	Possessive pronoun	64	69		4
good	Adjective	65	110, 2280		32
some	Determiner, pronoun	66	60		10
could	Verb	67	71		6
them	Pronoun	68	59		3
see	Verb	69	67		25
other	Adjective, pronoun	70	75, 715, 2355		12
than	Conjunction, preposition	71	73, 712		4
then	Adverb	72	77		10
now	Preposition	73	72, 1906		13
look	Verb	74	85, 604		17
only	Adverb	75	101, 329		11
come	Verb	76	70		20
its	Possessive pronoun	77	78		2
over	Preposition	78	124, 182		19
think	Verb	79	56		10
also	Adverb	80	87		2
back	Noun, adverb	81	108, 323, 1877		36
after	Preposition	82	120, 260		14
use	Verb, noun	83	92, 429		17
two	Noun	84	80		6
how	Adverb	85	76		11
our	Possessive pronoun	86	79		3
work	Verb, noun	87	117, 199		28
first	Adjective	88	86, 2064		10
well	Adverb	89	100, 644		30
way	Noun, adverb	90	84, 4090		16
even	Adjective	91	107, 484		23
new	Adjective et al.	92	88		18
want	Verb	93	83		10
because	Conjunction	94	89, 509		7
any	Pronoun	95	109, 4720		4
these	Pronoun	96	82		2
give	Verb	97	98		19
day	Noun	98	90		9
most	Adverb	99	144, 187		12
us	Pronoun	100	113		6

Parts of speech

The following is a very similar list, subdivided by part of speech.^[1] The list labeled «Others» includes pronouns, possessives, articles, modal verbs, adverbs, and conjunctions.

Rank	Nouns	Verbs	Adjectives	Prepositions	Others
1	time	be	good	to	the
2	person	have	new	of	and
3	year	do	first	in	a
4	way	say	last	for	that
5	day	get	long	on	I
6	thing	make	great	with	it
7	man	go	little	at	not
8	world	know	own	by	he
9	life	take	other	from	as
10	hand	see	old	up	you
11	part	come	right	about	this
12	child	think	big	into	but
13	eye	look	high	over	his
14	woman	want	different	after	they
15	place	give	small		her
16	work	use	large		she
17	week	find	next		or
18	case	tell	early		an
19	point	ask	young		will
20	government	work	important		my
21	company	seem	few		one
22	number	feel	public		all
23	group	try	bad		would
24	problem	leave	same		there
25	fact	call	able		their

References

^ ^a ^b ^c ^d «The Oxford English Corpus: Facts about the language». OxfordDictionaries.com. Oxford University Press. What is the commonest word?. Archived from the original on December 26, 2011. Retrieved June 22, 2011.
^ «The Oxford English Corpus». AskOxford.com. Archived from the original on May 4, 2006. Retrieved June 22, 2006.
^ The First 100 Most Commonly Used English Words Archived 2013-06-16 at the Wayback Machine.
^ Bill Bryson, The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way, Harper Perennial, 2001, page 58
^ Benjamin Zimmer. June 22, 2006. Time after time after time…. Language Log. Retrieved June 22, 2006.
^ Benjamin, Martin (2019). «Polysemy in top 100 Oxford English Corpus words within Wiktionary». Teach You Backwards. Retrieved December 28, 2019.
^ Garcia-Vega, M (2010). «Teasing out the meaning of «out»«. 29th International Conference on Lexis and Grammar.
^ «out — English-French Dictionary». www.wordreference.com. Retrieved November 22, 2022.
^ «Word frequency: based on 450 million word COCA corpus». www.wordfrequency.info. Retrieved April 11, 2018.

External links

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What Is Written English?

silviomedeiros / Getty Images

Updated on August 19, 2019

Written English is the way in which the English language is transmitted through a conventional system of graphic signs (or letters). Compare to spoken English.

The earliest forms of written English were primarily the translations of Latin works into English in the ninth century. Not until the late fourteenth century (that is, the late Middle English period) did a standard form of written English begin to emerge. According to Marilyn Corrie in The Oxford History of English (2006), written English has been characterized by «relative stability» during the Modern English period.

«[T]he vast majority of books and manuscripts produced in England before the invention of printing were written in Latin or (in later times) French. Administrative documents were not written in English in any number until the fourteenth century. The story of early written English is one of a local vernacular language struggling to achieve a distinct visual identity and written usage.»
(David Graddol et al., English: History, Diversity, and Change. Routledge, 1996)
«[A] new standard form of written English, this time based on the usage of London, began to emerge from the fifteenth century onwards. This was generally adopted by the early printers, who in turn provided a norm for private usage from the sixteenth century onwards.»
(Jeremy J. Smith, Essentials of Early English. Routledge, 1999)

Recording Functions of Written English

«The history of writing in the English-speaking world reveals a balancing act between competing recording functions of the written word. While written English has always had a role in creating durable records that were never intended to be read aloud, the ‘oral’ side of writing has been far more important than we tend to realize. Through most of the language’s history, an essential function of writing has been to aid in subsequent representation of spoken words. Overwhelmingly, those spoken words have been formal in character—drama, poetry, sermons, public speeches. ( . . . [B]eginning in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, writing developed a new set of quintessentially written functions with the emergence of newspapers and novels.)
«In the latter part of the twentieth century, a new twist was added, as writing increasingly came to represent informal speech. This time, there was no intention of later rendering such texts aloud. Gradually, we learned to write as we spoke (rather than preparing to speak as we wrote). As a result we’ve generally blurred older assumptions that speech and writing are two distinct forms of communication. Nowhere has this muddying of boundaries been more apparent than in the case of email.»
(Naomi S. Baron, Alphabet to Email: How Written English Evolved and Where It’s Heading. Routledge, 2000)

Writing and Speech

«When writing developed, it was derived from and represented speech, albeit imperfectly . . ..
«To affirm the primacy of speech over writing is not, however, to disparage the latter. If speaking makes us human, writing makes us civilized. Writing has some advantages over speech. For example, it is more permanent, thus making possible the records that any civilization must have. Writing is also capable of easily making some distinctions that speech can make only with difficulty. We can, for example, indicate certain types of pauses more clearly by the spaces that we leave between words when we write than we ordinarily are able to do when we speak. Grade A may well be heard as gray day, but there is no mistaking the one phrase for the other in writing.»
(John Algeo and Thomas Pyles, The Origins and Development of the English Language, 5th ed. Thomson Wadsworth, 2005)

Standard Written English

«Standard or standardized written English (SWE). It’s alive and well in our culture, but what does it mean? Many varieties of English get into print in various contexts, but ‘standard’ doesn’t refer to all of them—not even to everything published in mainstream books and magazines. It refers only to one slice of mainstream writing—but an incredibly important and powerful slice: the slice that people happen to call ‘correct edited written English.’ When people champion Standard Written English, they sometimes call it ‘proper’ or ‘correct’ or ‘literate’ writing. . . . [I]t’s a language that is found only on paper—and only in the texts of certain ‘established writers,’ and its rules are in grammar books. So again: standardized written English (or prescriptive written English) is no one’s mother tongue.»
(Peter Elbow, Vernacular Eloquence: What Speech Can Bring to Writing. Oxford Univ. Press, 2012)
«Unlike most other kinds of English, standard written English is strongly codified. That is, there is almost total agreement as to which forms and usages form part of it and which do not. . . .
«Mastery of standard written English is a requirement for many professions, and it is highly desirable in many others. But nobody comes naturally equipped with this mastery. Standard written English has to be acquired, usually by formal education. Sadly, however, in recent years schools in most English-speaking countries have pulled back from teaching this material. As a result, even university graduates with good degrees often find themselves with a command of standard English that is at best inadequate and at worst distressing. This is not a trivial problem, since a poor command of the conventions of standard English will often make a very bad impression on those who must read your writing.»
(Robert Lawrence Trask, Say What You Mean!: A Troubleshooter’s Guide to English Style and Usage. David R. Godine, 2005)

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The 100 Most Common Written Words in English

The following are the most common written words in the English language as chosen by Oxford English Corpus.

1-25	26-50	51-75	75-100
the be to of and a in that have I it for not on with he as you do at this but his by from	they we say her she or an will my one all would there their what so up out if about who get which go me	when make can like time no just him know take person into year your good some could them see other than then now look only	come its over think also back after use two how our work first well way even new want because any these give day most us

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Estoy, Estás, Está—One Word or Three?

A Sentence that Translates as One Word

Counting the Words in the Dictionary

Which language has the most words? Maybe it’s English.

So, which language is richest in words?

About Interpreters and Translators, Inc.

100 most common words

Parts of speech

See also

Word lists

References

External links

What Is Written English?

Recording Functions of Written English

Writing and Speech

Standard Written English

The 100 Most Common Written Words in English