The Oxford English Dictionary contains over
600,000 words. Simply put, no other language comes close. Spanish, for example,
only has 100,000 words. Here’s the sad news: The richness of the English
language more or less goes to waste. The average English speaker recognizes
somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 words.
But guess how many words we actually use of a
regular basis? According to Richard Lederer, 96% of average conversations
conducted in English are comprised of the 737 most common words! Listen to a
conversation the next time you’re in some public place, and you’ll probably be
able to quickly confirm these findings.
Maybe we don’t need 500 words for “big” when “big”
will do just fine, but if that’s true, isn’t it interesting that the English language
keeps growing by 1,000 words each year? The language itself continues to grow
larger, while the average English-speaker's vocabulary seems to shrink year after year.
Who takes the time to study vocabulary words? I
did for a while, but that was years ago when I was studying for the GRE. I have
never met anyone who studies vocabulary
for fun. Maybe there are some crossword puzzle fans or Scrabble players out
there that study vocabulary words, but why aren’t there thousands, if not
millions, of English-speaking people who just want to be able to communicate
better? Why aren’t they studying vocabulary?
Studying vocabulary is a natural process. When my
five-year old daughter doesn’t recognize a word, she asks. That’s really all
that’s required, but for the most part, once we grow up, we no longer take the
time to ask. We no longer take the time to learn. We’re content with what we
know, and if we read a passage and don’t recognize a word, we don’t stop to
look it up. We just race right past it, content with the 700 words or so that
serve most of our daily purposes.
How would you describe your knowledge of
the English language? If you don’t study vocabulary, is it because you think
you already know all the words you need?
“Drawing on my fine command of the English
language, I said nothing.” – Robert Benchley
As usual, that is perceptive. One thing that troubles me is that a great amount of current speech and writing uses language which is not at all uplifting. I mean uplifting in many senses, perhaps, but even in the simplest sense of lifting the reader to a higher level of appreciation for clear and lucid writing, much writing today fails. Too often if makes no attempt.
ReplyDeleteThen there are those who think the interjection of a "hell" or a "damn", or maybe a reference to a bodily function, will improve the writing.