And lo On Mon, 19 Jan 2009 19:08:51 -0000, Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull>  
did spake thusly:

> Darren New wrote:
>> Invisible wrote:
>>> Already seen it. (Why do you think I picked that example?) I'm still  
>>> wondering just how large a typical vocabulary is. I'm guessing tens of  
>>> thousands of words, roughly.
>>  Probably.
>>  An easier measure is "how many different words show up in a large  
>> newspaper over the course of a year". The answer there, I've heard, is  
>> around 8000-10000 words.
>>  Counting words in a dictionary seems the wrong way to go.
>
> I did do an experiment where I picked a random page from the dictionary  
> and read the first word off it. It took a *loooong* time before I came  
> across a word I didn't already clearly recognise.

And perhaps that's a good way of measuring vocabulary, or relative  
vocabulary at least - give a disparately educated group a book written for  
a particular age bracket and ask them to make a note of each word they  
didn't understand. That would eliminate the climb, climbs, climbing count  
and distinguish the unpossible from the igneous.

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

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