There is no single answer to this question.It is difficult because what is a word?If a word is a noun and a verb should it be counted as two words?Also English uses many foreign words,so many in fact,should they be counted as well?
The Second Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary contains full entries for 171,476 words in current use,and 47,156 obsolete words.To this may be added around 9,500 derivative words included as subentries.Over half of these words are nouns,about a quarter adjectives,and about a seventh verbs; the rest is made up of interjections,conjunctions,prepositions,suffixes,etc.These figures take no account of entries with senses for different parts of speech (such as noun and adjective).
This suggests that there are,at the very least,a 250,000 distinct English words,excluding inflections,and words from technical and regional vocabulary not covered by the OED,or words not yet added to the published dictionary,of which perhaps 20 per cent are no longer in current use.If distinct senses were counted,the total would probably approach 750,000 to 1,000,000.
Average 5 to 6 year olds in English speaking countries have a working vocabulary of 2,500 to 5,000 words.The average student learns about 3,000 words per year in the early school years
The average adult native English speaker can recognize 40,000-50,000 words There is no single answer to this question.It is difficult because what is a word?If a word is a noun and a verb should it be counted as two words?Also English uses many foreign words,so many in fact,should they be counted as well?
The Second Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary contains full entries for 171,476 words in current use,and 47,156 obsolete words.To this may be added around 9,500 derivative words included as subentries.Over half of these words are nouns,about a quarter adjectives,and about a seventh verbs; the rest is made up of interjections,conjunctions,prepositions,suffixes,etc.These figures take no account of entries with senses for different parts of speech (such as noun and adjective).
This suggests that there are,at the very least,a 250,000 distinct English words,excluding inflections,and words from technical and regional vocabulary not covered by the OED,or words not yet added to the published dictionary,of which perhaps 20 per cent are no longer in current use.If distinct senses were counted,the total would probably approach 750,000 to 1,000,000.
Average 5 to 6 year olds in English speaking countries have a working vocabulary of 2,500 to 5,000 words.The average student learns about 3,000 words per year in the early school years
The average adult native English speaker can recognize 40,000-50,000 words