The Independent writes that the English language will soon have its 1-millionth word.
bq. * Spanish linguists say there are 225,000 words in contemporary use.
* The largest edition of the Duden German-German dictionary contains about 200,000 words
* The Russian language has just reached the 125,000 mark.
* French has 100,000 words, one-sixth of the figure used in the UK.But the Academié Française, the body that defines the language, recognises 25,525.
I don’t know how big the vocabulary of German is supposed to be. I know the Duden doesn’t include words from specialist jargons.
(Via Onze Taal and langwich sandwich)
This stuff used to het up guardians of Spanish’s status as God’s own language so much that years were spent demonstrating that most English words aren’t actually proper words at all but evidence of the irresistible decline of the Anglo-Saxon race in the face of triumphant National-Catholicism.
I suppose drinktea and torunbusiness are a bit marginal.
Remember that newspaper survey of yesteryear: the average English vocabulary used by native English speakers, in non-University English pubs, is 300 words and most of them were swear-words. A long way to go to 1 million…