how many words do you know?

[scruffy]

There are over a million words in the English language. Harvard and Google say about 1,022,000 as of 2010, growing by a couple thousand every year.

Oxford Intl says 171,000 words in common usage, and there are 471,000 words in Webster's.

On the other hand, the "average" English speaker (don't ask me how they figured that one out) only knows about 30,000 words.

How many words are in the English language? | EF English Live

Many people estimate that there are more than a million words in the English language. In fact, during a project looking at words in digitised books, researchers fro

englishlive.ef.com

If you had to take a guess, how many words would you say are in your vocabulary? (Include technical words and slang).

 

[NewsVine_Mariyam]

There are over a million words in the English language. Harvard and Google say about 1,022,000 as of 2010, growing by a couple thousand every year.

Oxford Intl says 171,000 words in common usage, and there are 471,000 words in Webster's.

On the other hand, the "average" English speaker (don't ask me how they figured that one out) only knows about 30,000 words.

How many words are in the English language? | EF English Live

Many people estimate that there are more than a million words in the English language. In fact, during a project looking at words in digitised books, researchers fro

englishlive.ef.com

If you had to take a guess, how many words would you say are in your vocabulary? (Include technical words and slang).

The English language uses a lot of words borrowed from other languages as well, but for some reason the ONLY one I can think of at the moment is "croissant".

Are these "borrowed" words included in the 1,022,000 do you know?

 

[GLASNOST]

how many words do you know?​

A couple of million, for sure.

 

[toobfreak]

Oxford Intl says 171,000 words in common usage, and there are 471,000 words in Webster's.

I can't believe there are many words in "common usage" I don't know, so officially, I'd have to guess I must know maybe 200,000 words or more.

At least that is the official story. Unofficially, I really only know 19 words, I just keep rearranging/changing all of the letters and usage around to make it appear like I know more.

 

[scruffy]

The English language uses a lot of words borrowed from other languages as well, but for some reason the ONLY one I can think of at the moment is "croissant".

Are these "borrowed" words included in the 1,022,000 do you know?

Yes, they are. Not sure about Oxford but croissant is definitely in Webster's

 

[toobfreak]

Yes, they are. Not sure about Oxford but croissant is definitely in Webster's

I have an unabridged Webster's dictionary that must be at least 4 inches thick I got for something like $20 back when you could still get big, hardcover dictionaries.

I can't believe there are many new important words missing in it other than maybe slang and maybe a few technical terms.

Of course, I do not count Klingon and Ubbi Dubbi (starts 55 seconds in).

 

[GLASNOST]

The English language uses a lot of words borrowed from other languages as well, but for some reason the ONLY one I can think of at the moment is "croissant".

Mouton

 

[MostBoringManInTheWorld]

Couple a hundred, give or take a couple.

 

[toobfreak]

Couple a hundred, give or take a couple.

I know the word sesquipedalian. Other than that, most of my words are just four letter words no longer fit for this forum other than as a string of *****.

 

[scruffy]

For reference, the state of the art in natural language processing is real time translation with 99.4% accuracy and latency under 120 msec.

I claim expanded vocabulary because I know a lot of technical words. ("Domain specific knowledge"). But Google knows everything I know, it knows the words. CoPilot isn't quite as smart but it's still pretty good (however it's miserable with images).

Where the artificial systems fail is when things get noisy. In images, this means when the distinction between figure and background is either too localized or too small. This is what I found out last night playing with bounding boxes. The purpose of all that contrast enhancement in the retina is in fact to enhance contrast! So now we know why it's there. It's not just "interesting engineering", it actually has a purpose. The upstream systems rely on it for fine discrimination.

Humans, you and I, can pick out a single speaker in a noisy room, and distinguish most of the words. If you want to laugh at AI, go to the airport with your cell phone and try talking to the Google AI. It has real trouble with anything north of a pin drop. Dogs barking will kill it, even a water fountain will confuse it.