How many words does a native speaker use in daily life?
“Green Eggs and Ham,” is a book written by Dr. Seuss (a pen-name of Theodor Seuss Geisel), whose vocabulary famously consists of just fifty different words. It was the result of a bet between Seuss and his publisher, Bennett Cerf, that Seuss (after completing The Cat in the Hat using 225 words) could not complete an entire book using so few words.
Obviously, if one can write a book using as few as 50 words, it makes no doubt that having a vocabulary of 40,000 words is not necessary for communicating. For your information, though, according to Susie Dent, lexicographer and expert in dictionaries, the average active vocabulary of an adult English speaker is of around 20,000 words, with a passive one of around 40,000 words.
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How many words does a native speaker use in daily life?
“Green Eggs and Ham,” is a book written by Dr. Seuss---the pen-name of Theodor Seuss Geisel---whose vocabulary famously consisted of just fifty different words. It was the result of a bet between Seuss and his publisher, Bennett Cerf, that Seuss (after completing The Cat in the Hat using 225 words) could not complete an entire book using so few words.
Obviously, if one can write a book using as few as 50 words, it seems doubtful that having a vocabulary of 40,000 words is not necessary for communicating. According to lexicographer Susie Dent, the average active vocabulary of an adult English speaker is around 40,000 words, with a passive one of around 20,000 words.
Did you invert the numbers, perhaps? Lovely and thought-provoking composition nevertheless.
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