The Savannah morning news., 1903-08-04
An Estimate of one. Vocabulary.


From the Indianapolis Journal.
There often appears in print an item
which reads somewhat like this: An
ordinary man will say everything that
any occasion calls for with vocab-
ulary of 1000 words. OF these he COM
monty uses but 400 or 500, reserving the
remainder for the emergency of an idea
out of his usual line of thought.
In accordance with this is a state
ment once made by a speaker at an
educational meeting: The best edu-
Gated person in this room will not use
more than 500 or ZOO words" And he
added that an ignorant man would not
use more than 300 or 400 Some years
ago writer in the Chautauquan said:
1T is estimated that an English farm
hand has a vocabulary limited to 800
words. An American workman who
reads the newspapers may command
from 200 to 1000 words. Five thousand
is large number. even for an edu-
Gated reader or speaker" This is a
step forward. yet 1t still seems a far
cry to Shakespeares vocabulary of 49,
600 words. or even to Milton's 5000.
Any one may. with a little trouble,
estimate the number of words whose
meanings would be plain to him In
vocabulary an estimate was made in
this way: An abridged dictionary was
used because almost all unusual words
would thereby be at once eliminated.
Under each letter of the alphabet a
page or more of words was selected at
random and counted. A separate rec
ord was kept of primitive and deriva-
| tive words. That is. among the for
mer was put measure; among the lat
| ter m paSnra hla rl1pa S1I req hlpneSS meas
| urably, measurer. measureless. meas
urement, measurer, unreasonable, and
unmeasured. Compound words, whose
meanings were clearly indicated by
| their component, were omitted; as,
| clock-work. draught-horse, hard-earn-
ed. Counting this way, an average of
| twenty primitive and thirty-five deriv
alive words was found on each page.
This would make, there being Sl4
| pages of vocabulary in the dictionary,
| a total of 1920 of the former and U.s.
| 49O OF the latter, or almost $4,000 in ALL
Next was taken a page in each let
| ter and on 1t were counted the words
which it seemed any person of average
| intelligence would be able to use and
understand. On twenty-four pages
| there were 268 primitive words and 221
derivative, or nearly 1900 in all of the
former and more than 1000 of the lat
| ter. And lastly was made a count of
very common words, such as even a
| poorly educated person could hardly
escape knowing. and they were found
to number $500 primitive and 5000 de-
| rivative. No proper names were in
Guided in any of the countings.
1t would therefore seem to follow, If
what we are told of the vocabularies
| of Shakspere and Milton be correct,
that a person of average education to-
day knows at least as many words as
did the former, and one whose school
| opportunities have been quite limited is
capable of walking beside the latter
In this respect. AS regards ideas and
ability to express them however, the
| difference may be world wide.
The foregoing facts seem to warrant
these general conclusions: Every we'll
read person of fair ability and educa-
ton will be able to define or to UNI
derstant as used nearly or quite, per-
haps more than, 10000 words And
the same person in conversation and
writing will command not fewer than
$1,000 to 10000, and can add 5000 to
| 10000 to these numbers If he be lit
erarily inclined. The plain people, as
Lincoln liked to call them, use or
read understandingly from 5000 to 10,
600 words, according to their general
intelligence and converse tionaI power
while a person who cannot read, but
who has good degree of native ment-
al ability, will command about 50O0