News:

Main Menu

So, how large is it?

Started by Lilias, December 26, 2012, 05:14:13 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Frozen Flame

33,800 words.. Like almost everyone else, those last two columns had me feeling way out of my comfort zone. I should probably try to find more challenging reading material.

Toral Stimins

39,200. But having said that, being a NON-native English speaker, that fact alone helped me a lot. There's a lot of words there that I know from other languages, French, Latin, German even. I can very well imagine that someone who's never spoken any other language than English is going to struggle with many of those words.

Gallows

Quote from: Toral Stimins on October 28, 2013, 12:47:59 AM
39,200. But having said that, being a NON-native English speaker, that fact alone helped me a lot. There's a lot of words there that I know from other languages, French, Latin, German even. I can very well imagine that someone who's never spoken any other language than English is going to struggle with many of those words.

I came out at 33,500 as a native English speaker, which shows me there's still more for me to learn even at my age, but I certainly don't claim to be any kind of scholar beyond a standard high school education and a passion for reading.

But I agree with your point Toral, English is a language that has so many other influences and other languages, that there can be a lot you can deduce or understand from knowing the equivalent in other languages.  I guess it just shows the multi-cultural (or at least multi-conquest) history of Britain, with our mixture of native Celtic roots, Roman, Anglo-Saxon and Nordic settlers/invaders, the influence of the Norman French conquerors and so forth.

We also seem to be a culture that assimilates words, from French and Latin elements becoming fashionable in the nineteenth century, through of picking up all kinds of words from our days of Empire, from India especially.

Toral Stimins

Quote from: Gallows on October 28, 2013, 04:21:46 AM
I came out at 33,500 as a native English speaker, which shows me there's still more for me to learn even at my age, but I certainly don't claim to be any kind of scholar beyond a standard high school education and a passion for reading.

But I agree with your point Toral, English is a language that has so many other influences and other languages, that there can be a lot you can deduce or understand from knowing the equivalent in other languages.  I guess it just shows the multi-cultural (or at least multi-conquest) history of Britain, with our mixture of native Celtic roots, Roman, Anglo-Saxon and Nordic settlers/invaders, the influence of the Norman French conquerors and so forth.

We also seem to be a culture that assimilates words, from French and Latin elements becoming fashionable in the nineteenth century, through of picking up all kinds of words from our days of Empire, from India especially.

I was surprised, to say the very least, about the absence of more 'Ye olde English' words. Having lived in England for nearly 7 years now, I never come across Latin words, or French ones. Where as for instance in the Netherlands (where I come from) words as parapluie (umbrella), portemonnaie (wallet) are common, I very rarely see words here that I can remember from my school days. The funniest word that I knew on that list was williwaw, but that's only because someone on a forum I used to frequent (football) had that as her user name.

With these sorts of quizzes/questionnaires (well, there's a French word) it's often hit and miss. Now I scored high and tomorrow with a slightly different one, I might be rock bottom.

I have to look up a '100 things' list from The Times (newspaper), they had a great one about 100 foods you should have eaten.

Haloriel

... Gonna go crawl in my hole with books.  Came out with an estimate of 44,600.

phoenyx

31,500 words

huh very interesting. thanks for the link *grins*
♪ But my secrets are so safe
The only one who gets me ♪

O/O

ladia2287


Passion and Desire

Very interesting link, thanks for sharing! I'm clocking in at an estimated 27,000 words (as a non-native speaker).

My reaction when I saw columns 3 and 4 in step 2: "Mmhm. Yeah. Mmhm. Oh, yeah yeah yeah. I know some of these words." ;D

Quote from: Haloriel on November 24, 2013, 12:14:59 PM
... Gonna go crawl in my hole with books.  Came out with an estimate of 44,600.
*stares in utter awe* :o

Keelan

33,300 Words, Native (USA) English Speaker

Huh, higher than I thought it'd be... fun test though! ;3

Boyd34

23,700 words
At least I can spell my own name... sometimes that is.

Lux12

43,700

I know I have a rather sizable vocabulary, but I hadn't thought it was quite so massive. I'd dare say it's still something of a shock.

Paladin101

  32,400 words. Last couple columns were a pain in the butt though have to say.

slaveaziza

Your total vocabulary size is estimated to be:
20,300 words.

I expected this to be a much larger number considering how much I love to read and am always looking for definitions of words.

DarkHunter

21 700
I'm still young :) lots of learning to do still.

despickable

27,200 words.
I thought i would have rated higher but after looking at how they set it up what was taken out like slang and foreign words used in everyday speech, then I figure i did pretty good, well fine etc
The last column I knew about four words one or two I had heard before but couldn't put  meaning to.
Still it was fun doing it

“We have multiplied our possessions but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often. We’ve learned how to make a living but not a life. We’ve added years to life, not life to years.” – George Carlin
Despickable's A&A 
Despickable's Wiki Page
[url=https://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=133839.0]
[/url][/url]Despickable's Ons and Offs

Crimzon Dragon

23,900 words...looks to be on the low side of normal...geez, and I thought I had a good grasp of the language.  Definitely have to do more reading.

Andi

~37,000 , non-native speaker. Didn't think I was /that/ erudite...

gaggedLouise

#292
36.400. Non-native and so far haven't lived in an English-speaking country for more than a month in one go, but it's not hard to get heavily exposed to English whether on E, at univewrsity or in Scandinavia in general. Guess I qualify as bilingual, or trilingual, including French.

I daresay I picked up most of my higher English skills outside of the classroom.

Good girl but bad  -- Proud sister of the amazing, blackberry-sweet Violet Girl

Sometimes bound and cuntrolled, sometimes free and easy 

"I'm a pretty good cook, I'm sitting on my groceries.
Come up to my kitchen, I'll show you my best recipes"

Amelita

29.400. Non native and never lived in an English speaking country (visits counting a total of a single month), I consider this a score I can be proud of ^^

Especially considering this: "And for foreign learners of English, we've found that the most common vocabulary size is from 2,500–9,000 words."

But then, I doubt those numbers include a large total of people who write fiction regularly in English and converse in that language on daily basis...

And wow you guys, with over 35.000... 


RP Etiquette ~ Tumblr ~ Mumbler
~ There is nothing to writing; all you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed ~
Ons & Offs ~ Post Tracker ~ Ladies in Red

Sho

36,000 words, as a native speaker. Started to feel like an idiot by the end of the fourth column, though - I didn't check off the boxes, but I made sure to look the words up! At least I learned some new things. Thought I was going crazy, though…there were more than enough that I didn't know, which I found a bit embarrassing, considering I grew up speaking this language...

Empress

26,600 words

Though English IS my second language, I've been writing in English for years, this kinda made me feel stupid, haha.
I RP over Discord, my post count does not reflect my post frequency.

Kane

27 100

Non-Native English speaker, and have nothing to do with any languages that English has drawn influence either (My native language is Finnish), yet it's better than average native English speaker (of my age) so I'm quite happy with it.

Though, I too was made to feel dumb by the last column, though I picked quite a few points there just because I'm a sucker for weird words and then to know a lot of them.


Friday

36,8000.  I saw a number of words in the 4th column of the 2nd page that I knew I'd seen before, but had apparently never bothered to learn the meaning of.

jaybee55

41,300

But in my opinion this test relies too heavily on anachronistic vocabulary - the sort of words often used to trick spelling bee participants and of no particular value in everyday life  - so I'd take the results with a salubrious dram of saline (*snicker*).
Ons and Offs (incomplete)