Assessing the size of the vocabulary of an individual is at least as problematical. Take Shakespeare: you?d think it would be easy to assess his vocabulary. We have the plays and sonnets and we just have to count the words in them (according to the American Heritage Dictionary, there are 884,647 of them, made up of 29,066 distinct forms, including proper names). But estimates of Shakespeare?s vocabulary vary from about 18,000 to 25,000 in various books, because writers have different views about what constitutes a distinct word.

It?s common to see figures for vocabulary quoted such as 10,000-12,000 words for a 16-year-old, and 20,000-25,000 for a college graduate. These seem not to have much research to back them up. Usually they don?t make clear whether active or passive vocabulary is being quoted, and they don?t account for differences in lifestyle, profession and hobby interests between individuals.

A lexicographer described a simple research project ? using random pages from a dictionary ? that suggests these figures are severe underestimates. He concludes that a better average for a college graduate might be 60,000 active words and 75,000 passive ones. But this method of assessing vocabulary counts dictionary headwords only; it would be possible to multiply it several-fold to include different senses, inflected forms, and compounds. Another assessment ? of a million-word collection of American texts ? identified about 38,000 headwords. Bearing in mind this was all general writing, this doesn?t sound so different from lexicographer?s estimates for graduate vocabularies.

Ashveen Kutowaroo

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