Linguists have calculated the vocabulary of the average person. Vocabulary of Russian speakers: the influence of age and education What is the individual vocabulary of a modern educated person?

How many words do you think the average person knows? Everyone remembers the famous passage from the immortal work of E. Petrov and I. Ilf “The Twelve Chairs” about the comparison of the vocabulary of Shakespeare and Ellochka the Ogress. The same quote can be cited as confirmation of the hypothesis that a person’s vocabulary depends on what that person is like. For example, an uneducated person or a small child would be several hundred; literate - several thousand.

And such geniuses as Pushkin or Shakespeare have up to fifteen thousand. By the way, clarifications should be made regarding the latter. The four-volume Dictionary of the Pushkin Language contains 21,191 words. Scientists have calculated exactly this number of words used in all the letters and works of the famous Russian poet. The vocabulary of the great English playwright is a little less - about fifteen thousand words. But according to some sources, there are about eighteen thousand of them. In relation to ordinary people, the picture looks somewhat different. But first, let's figure out what a lexicon is. We will also define the concepts of passive and active vocabulary. So...

What is a lexicon?

From ancient Greek it means “word”, “figure of speech”. The exact lexicon sounds like this: a combination of words of a particular language, parts of words or language that a specific person or a specific group of people speaks. Vocabulary is the central part of the language, which names, forms and conveys knowledge about any phenomena or objects. In other words, this is a language section that studies words, pronunciation, composition of speech, etc.

Passive and active vocabulary

When we are talking about a certain set of words that a person uses every day in his speech, which he uses to express his feelings and thoughts, this implies an active vocabulary. The usage and combinatorics of such words can be varied. But it is still a “tool” of thoughts, feelings, actions. In the case when a person does not use certain words, but knows their meaning (often very approximate), recognizes it in the text he is reading, then we mean passive vocabulary. The passive lexicon includes words of special use: neologisms, archaisms, many dialectisms and the like.

Number of words in the lexicon

It should be noted, returning to the question of what a lexicon is, that each person’s active and passive dictionaries are individual. It depends on the age, profession, general cultural level, personal qualities, tastes and even the place of residence of the person. According to statistics, the active vocabulary of an adult with higher education is seven to nine thousand words. Passive - twenty to twenty-four thousand. Although in everyday communication we get by with only one or two thousand words. They say that the possibilities of human memory are almost limitless. Therefore, you can safely increase your vocabulary and learn foreign words, thereby enriching the Russian vocabulary.

The fact that the language's dictionary contains approximately 300 thousand words is only of theoretical interest for a beginner learning this language. Perhaps the main principle for the reasonable organization of your studies, especially at the initial stage, is the economy of words. You need to learn to memorize as few words as possible, but do it as best as possible.

Let us emphasize that our approach is directly opposite to the guiding principle of “suggestopedia”, with its emphasis on the abundance of words presented to the student. As you know, in accordance with its canons, a beginner needs to be literally “showered with words.” It is best to give him or her 200 new words every day.

Is there any doubt that any normal person will forget all those numerous words with which he was “showered” using this, so to speak, method - and most likely very soon, in just a few days.

Don't chase too much

It will be much better if at the end of a certain stage of study you know 500 or 1000 words very well than 3000 - but poorly. Don’t let yourself be led into a dead end by teachers who will assure you that you need to first learn a certain number of words in order to “get into the swing of things.” Only you yourself can and must decide whether the vocabulary you have mastered is sufficient for your goals and interests.

Language learning experience shows that about 400 well-chosen words can cover up to 90 percent of the vocabulary you need for everyday communication purposes. In order to read, you will need more words, but many of them are only passive. Therefore, with knowledge of 1500 words, you can already understand fairly meaningful texts.

It is better to master the words that are most necessary and important to you than to constantly rush to learn new ones. “He who pursues too much risks missing everything,” says a Swedish proverb. “If you chase two hares, you won’t catch either,” a Russian proverb answers.

Vocabulary in oral speech

Very roughly speaking, about 40 well-chosen, high-frequency words will cover about 50% of word usage in everyday speech in any language;

• 200 words will cover about 80%;
• 300 words - approximately 85%;
• 400 words will cover about 90%;
• Well, 800-1000 words are about 95% of what would need to be said or heard in the most ordinary situation.

Thus, the right vocabulary helps you understand quite a lot with very little effort spent on cramming.

Example: if a total of 1000 words are spoken in an everyday conversation, then 500 of them, that is, 50%, will be covered by the 40 most common high-frequency words.

We emphasize that these percentages, of course, are not the result of exact calculations. They simply give the most general idea of ​​how many words it will take to feel confident when entering into a simple dialogue with a native speaker. In any case, there is no doubt that by correctly choosing from 400 to 800 words and remembering them well, you can feel confident in a simple conversation, since they will cover almost 100% of those words that you cannot do without. Of course, under other, less favorable conditions, 400 words will cover only 80% of what you need to know - instead of 90 or 100%.

Reading vocabulary

When reading, having correctly chosen and well remembered about 80 of the most common, most frequent words, you will understand about 50% of a simple text;

• 200 words will cover approximately 60%;
• 300 words - 65%;
• 400 words - 70%;
• 800 words - approximately 80%;
• 1500 - 2000 words - about 90%;
• 3000 - 4000 - 95%;
• and 8,000 words will cover almost 99 percent of the written text.

Example: if you have a text in front of you with a volume of approximately 10 thousand words (this is approximately 40 printed pages), then, having learned the most necessary 400 words in advance, you will understand about 7000 words that are used in this text.

Let us note again that the figures we give are only indicative. Depending on various additional conditions, 50 words will cover up to 50 percent of the written text, but in other cases you will need to learn at least 150 words to get the same result.

Vocabulary: from 400 to 100,000 words

• 400 - 500 words - active vocabulary for language proficiency at a basic (threshold) level.
• 800 - 1000 words - active vocabulary in order to explain yourself; or passive reading vocabulary at a basic level.
• 1500 - 2000 words - an active vocabulary, which is quite enough to ensure everyday communication throughout the day; or passive vocabulary sufficient for confident reading.
• 3000 - 4000 words - in general, enough for almost fluent reading of newspapers or literature in the specialty.
• About 8,000 words - provide complete communication for the average European. There is practically no need to know more words in order to communicate freely both orally and in writing, as well as read literature of any kind.
• 10,000-20,000 words - the active vocabulary of an educated European (in their native language).
• 50,000-100,000 words - the passive vocabulary of an educated European (in their native language).

It should be noted that vocabulary alone does not ensure free communication. At the same time, having mastered 1,500 correctly chosen words, with some additional training, you will be able to communicate almost freely.

As for professional terms, they usually do not present any particular difficulties, since in most cases this is an international vocabulary that is quite easy to master.

When you already know about 1500 words, you can start reading at a fairly decent level. With passive knowledge of 3,000 to 4,000 words, you will be fluent in reading literature in your specialty, at least in those areas where you are confident. In conclusion, we note that, according to calculations carried out by linguists based on a number of languages, the average educated European actively uses about 20,000 words (and half of them are quite rare). In this case, the passive vocabulary is at least 50,000 words. But all this concerns the native language.

Basic vocabulary

In the pedagogical literature you can find the terminological combination “basic vocabulary”. From my point of view, at the maximum level the vocabulary is about 8000 words. It seems to me that it is hardly necessary to learn more words, except perhaps for some special purposes. Eight thousand words will be enough for full communication in any conditions.

When starting to learn a language, it would be wise to make do with shorter lists. Here are three levels that I have found in practice to provide a good guide for a beginner:

• level A("basic vocabulary"):

400-500 words. They are enough to cover approximately 90% of all word usage in everyday oral communication or about 70% of simple written text;

• level B(“minimum vocabulary”, “mini-level”):

800-1000 words. They are enough to cover approximately 95% of all word usage in everyday oral communication or about 80-85% of written text;

• level B("average vocabulary", "medium level"):

1500-2000 words. They are enough to cover approximately 95-100% of all word usage in everyday oral communication or about 90% of written text.

An example of a good dictionary of basic vocabulary can be considered the dictionary published by E. Klett in Stuttgart, 1971, under the title "Grundwortschatz Deutsch" ("Basic vocabulary of the German language"). It contains 2,000 of the most essential words in each of a selected six languages: German, English, French, Spanish, Italian and Russian.

Eric W. Gunnemark, Swedish polyglot

Scientists estimate the vocabulary of an adult at 3-10 thousand words. Guess what determines the number of words a person uses. Make four or five guesses.

Answer

First of all, it all depends on how well read a person is. Currently, the younger generation reads very little, and therefore sometimes they cannot connect two words. This is why many people use swear words very often, almost every word, and all because a person does not have enough words to describe his thoughts and feelings.

Of course, from your social circle, because if you communicate with people who can’t say anything other than swear words, then you won’t say anything smart. If you are surrounded by smart people, you can always hear smart words and statements from them.

Thus, the vocabulary of each of us, of course, depends on:

1) Degree of enthusiasm for reading books (the more he reads, the more vocabulary he has).

2) Social circle (a person communicating with candidates of science is somewhat ahead of people communicating with average teenagers).

3) Leisure (a person who prefers to watch scientific programs and documentaries in his free time still has a “stronger” vocabulary than someone who watches entertaining television programs).

4) Profession (a teacher who can fill words with neologisms from students every day has a larger vocabulary than an engineer working alone).

5) Quality (availability) of education (a person with three higher educations will be ahead of a preschooler in the volume of words used in speech).

6) Age (experience), the older a person is, the more words he heard, remembered, learned, studied, “acquired.”

A person’s assessment may well serve as a very objective indicator of his intellectual development, high level of culture and good education. Society, as a rule, perceives such a person as smart and creative. It is initially easier for such a member of society to find a good and more promising job, he moves up the career ladder faster and more successfully and has a reputation as a person whose advice and recommendations should be listened to more often and more carefully.

What does the concept of human vocabulary mean?

Simply put, this is a set of words that this or that person owns. According to modern scientists, human vocabulary is of two types: active and passive. The first consists of words that are used both in writing and in spoken language. Passive, in turn, is that set of words that is recognized and understood, but not used by a person. As a rule, the latter is several times greater than the former.

What is the vocabulary of the Russian language?

According to recently obtained statistics, our language has almost 500,000 words, but only 3,000 are used in everyday speech. The average schoolchild uses 5,000 words, and the vocabulary of an adult is 8,000.

In other languages ​​the situation is almost the same.

Is it possible to increase the set of words used?

Very often in everyday conversations one hears about the tongue-tiedness of one or another mutual acquaintance. You can often come across the opinion that the gift of oratory is given to us at birth and subsequently a person’s vocabulary (as a predisposition, for example, to some bad habits or diseases) cannot be corrected. This is nothing more than a delusion! Can! You can add, correct and improve! And it’s not that difficult to do, the main thing is to set a goal.

How to improve a person's vocabulary. List of simple tips

• Make a list of words that you are sure to use every day. Let this list be as long as possible. Ready? Now, using an explanatory dictionary or a dictionary of synonyms, write several alternatives next to each word. For example, “interesting” - remarkable, entertaining, curious, noteworthy, noteworthy. Try to remember them and use each of the written options at least once during the day. This is the only way they can remain in our memory.
• Read as much as possible. Start with books by authors who are close and pleasant to you. And only gradually will it be possible to move on to more serious literature. If an unfamiliar word appears in a work, it is recommended that you look up its meaning in the dictionary, and if you want to remember it, read it out loud and repeat it mentally several times. Why is this so? - Modern scientists have proven that human memory retains better what was said at least once.
• Write. If you have no one to write long, warm letters filled with positive emotions, use the example of Demosthenes: rewrite other people’s articles, favorite works of art, write down in a special notebook poems or sayings of the great that stirred something in your soul.
• Crosswords are also quite useful for developing vocabulary. But in this case, I would like to warn you that the publications publishing them must be well-known and trusted.
• If you have to spend most of your time on the road or behind the wheel, and there is simply a catastrophic lack of free time for the above, you can resort to the help of audiobooks, the choice of which is now quite large, and the quality is quite decent.

With these proven methods, you can gradually increase your vocabulary: English, Chinese, French and any other. But we should not forget that without making an effort, you are unlikely to be able to make your speech more melodic, informative and expressive.

“William Shakespeare’s dictionary, according to researchers, is 12,000 words. The dictionary of a black man from the cannibal tribe "Mumbo-Yumbo" is 300 words. Ellochka Shchukina easily and freely made do with thirty,” everyone is familiar with this quote from “The Twelve Chairs” by Ilf and Petrov. The satirists, and with them the readers, had a good laugh at the narrow-minded and undeveloped, but overly self-confident and arrogant Ellochka, all of whose interests, thoughts and emotions easily fit into thirty words. Meanwhile, when they start writing texts, many, without noticing it themselves, turn into the cannibal Ellochka. Whatever they want to write about, the same “Ho-ho!” comes out from the pen. and “Be rude, boy!” In this lesson we will talk about how to get rid of the problem of the cannibal Ellochka and expand your vocabulary. And in the next lesson we will learn how to learn to use it correctly.

Vocabulary

Vocabulary (dictionary, lexicon) is a set of words that a person understands and uses in his speech.

Vocabulary is usually divided into two types: active and passive.

Active vocabulary - these are the words that a person regularly uses in speech and writing.

Passive vocabulary - this set of words that a person knows and understands by hearing or reading, but does not use them himself. You can check your passive vocabulary on this site.

Typically, the volume of passive vocabulary exceeds the volume of active vocabulary several times. At the same time, the volumes of active and passive vocabulary are moving quantities: a person constantly learns new words and at the same time forgets or stops using words that he has already learned.

What should be the volume of active and passive vocabulary? Unexpectedly, it turned out that answering this question is quite difficult. Volume of the dictionary V.I. Dahl has two hundred thousand words, the academic dictionary of the modern Russian literary language - about one hundred and thirty thousand, the latest edition of Ozhegov's explanatory dictionary - seventy thousand words. Obviously, such meanings exceed the vocabulary of even the most erudite person. Unfortunately, there is no exact scientific data on what the average active and passive vocabulary of an adult educated person is. Estimates of active vocabulary range from five thousand to thirty-five thousand words. As for passive vocabulary, the range is from twenty thousand to one hundred thousand words. Most likely, the truth, as always, lies somewhere in the middle. It is reasonable to assume that the active vocabulary of an adult reaches approximately fifteen thousand words (as is known, the active vocabulary of such a master of words as Pushkin was about twenty thousand words), and the passive vocabulary is forty to fifty thousand words (it is difficult to imagine an ordinary person who would know all the meanings of words from Ozhegov’s dictionary).

There is a simple way to help you roughly estimate the size of your passive vocabulary. Take an explanatory dictionary, for example, the same Ozhegov dictionary, open it on a random page, count how many of the defined words you know. Be honest with yourself: if a word seems familiar to you, but you don’t know its exact meaning, then you don’t need to count that word. Next, multiply this figure by the number of pages. Of course, you need to keep in mind that this result is approximate: you must assume that all pages contain the same number of articles, of which you know the same number of words. For the purity of the experiment, you can repeat these steps several times. However, you still won’t get an accurate result.

If you are too lazy to bother with the dictionary and calculations yourself, you can use our test.

Ways to expand your vocabulary

When writing texts, it is very important that the words used are as diverse as possible. This, firstly, allows you to most accurately express your thoughts, and secondly, makes the perception of the text easier for the reader. There are several rules to help expand your vocabulary. They were designed primarily for people learning foreign languages, but can also be used effectively for native speakers.

Passive vocabulary

Read as much as possible. Reading- this is one of the main sources of new information, and, accordingly, new words. At the same time, try to choose literature of the highest possible level - it doesn’t matter whether we are talking about fiction, historical literature or journalism. The higher the level of the authors, the greater the chance that they use a variety of vocabulary, and most importantly, use words correctly. This way you will remember not only new words, but also the correct ways to use them.

Don't be afraid to appear ignorant. Many people feel extremely awkward when their interlocutor seems very educated, well-read and uses a lot of unfamiliar words. In such a situation, many are afraid of being branded ignorant, and therefore are embarrassed to ask about the meaning of this or that new word. Never do this. It's always better to ask about a word you don't know than to remain ignorant for the rest of your life. Don't expect to look this word up in the dictionary when you get home. You will simply forget it. If your interlocutor is really smart, your question will never seem funny to him.

Use a dictionary. It is useful to have a set of academic dictionaries and encyclopedias at home that you can refer to whenever necessary. Naturally, good dictionaries are not cheap, are often published in small editions and take up a lot of shelf space. Fortunately, with the development of the Internet, the problem of access to dictionaries has been solved. Nowadays you can find dictionaries and encyclopedias on almost any topic. The portals are quite convenient to use: slovari.yandex.ru and www.gramota.ru.

Active vocabulary

The tips above help expand primarily your passive vocabulary. However, the main topic of our lessons is effective writing. Therefore, the goal is not only to learn new words, but also to learn how to actively use them in writing. Here are a few exercises aimed at translating words from a passive vocabulary into an active one:

Notes method. You need to take cards, leaves or colored stickers. On one side you write the word you want to remember, on the other - its meaning, synonyms, examples of use. Such cards can be sorted at home, in transport, at work. Fast, convenient and effective!

Notebook of synonyms. You can take a simple notebook or create an electronic document where you will write down words and a series of synonyms for them. For example, take the word result. A number of synonyms for it: consequence, consequence, trace, fruit, sum, total, conclusion, conclusion. It must be remembered that not only synonymous words can be added here, but also entire constructions: thus, so, from here we can conclude that we have come to the conclusion that, etc. You can also make notes in such a notebook about the nature of a particular word: obsolete, high, colloquial, pejorative. If you use an electronic document, then words on the same topic can be combined into separate blocks. In addition, such a notebook can also be supplemented with antonyms.

Thematic cards. They are convenient to use if you want to remember and translate several words related to a common theme into your active dictionary. Write them down on one card and stick them in a visible place. As a result, if you remember at least one word from the card, the rest will inevitably come to your mind.

Association method. Try to accompany the memorization of words with associations: figurative, color, olfactory, tactile, gustatory, motor. Having such an association will help you remember the right word much faster. Moreover, you can rhyme a word that is important to you into some short poem or insert it into a stupid and meaningless but memorable statement.

Presentations and essays. We are accustomed to the fact that presentations and essays are school exercises, and, after finishing school, we can never return to them. Meanwhile, they help to significantly improve your writing skills and expand your active vocabulary. The presentations are suitable for a situation where you have read a text in which you came across many unfamiliar but useful words. Make a short written summary of this text using these key words and they will stay in your memory. As for essays, you don’t need to write long treatises; a short story of five sentences is enough, into which you insert new words.

Memory calendar. This is a repetition graph of the words you want to translate into the active dictionary. It is based on research into how human memory works. Scientists have long found out that after a week a person forgets eighty percent of all new information received. However, this percentage can be significantly reduced if you repeat the material at certain intervals. Then it goes into long-term active memory. For this purpose, the so-called rational repetition mode was developed. For convenience, here is a table:

• First rep. Immediately after finishing reading
• Second repetition. In half an hour
• Third repetition. Every other day
• Fourth repetition. In two days
• Fifth repetition. In three days
• Sixth repetition. In a week
• Seventh repetition. In two weeks
• Eighth repetition. In a month
• Ninth repetition. In two months

To achieve maximum effect, it is advisable not to deviate from the schedule. It is also best not to try to memorize a large array of words at once. It is better to divide words into small thematic groups and create your own repetition calendar for each group.

Crosswords, language games and puzzles. A great way to combine business with pleasure: practice learned words and play! Here are some of the most common language games: scrabble (in the Russian version - erudite, bald), anagrams, antiphrases, burime, metagrams, hat, contact.

Test your knowledge

If you want to test your knowledge on the topic of this lesson, you can take a short test consisting of several questions. For each question, only 1 option can be correct. After you select one of the options, the system automatically moves on to the next question. The points you receive are affected by the correctness of your answers and the time spent on completion. Please note that the questions are different each time and the options are mixed.