how many vocabulary words does the average person know
guest2 Fri Jun 06, 2008 9:46 pm GMT. Average native speakers (and even unaverage) know nowhere near 60,000 words in English or any other language. The most careful studies show that even university-educated speakers top out at about 20,000 base words--and that's receptive, not active. For example, see the following study, which shows the average for university-educated speakers at about 17,000 base words: