How many words do you actually use?–Update April 9, 2007
Posted by caveblogem in Blogs and Blogging, Other, statistical analysis, vocabulary, writing.trackback
[Note: This is part of a continuing series on the actual vocabulary in use in the blogosphere. Posts on this subject started here and will continue on a more-or-less weekly basis.]
So, I’ve put eleven blogs in my database so far, which has given me a total of more than 212,000 words. Here’s what I find by analyzing the whole pool thus far.
- 5% of the pool consists of the word “the.”
- Add the word “to” and the two of them comprise 8.4% of all words used so far.
- Add the word “of” and we go up to 11.1%
- Add “and” and that gets us to 13.8%
- Add “a” and we get to 16.3%
- Add “I” and we are at 18.4%
- Add “in” and we reach 20%. One-fifth of all the words used were repetitions of those first seven words.
- Add “that,” “it,” “is,” and “for,” and we reach 25% of the total.
- Add “you,” “on,” “this,” “was,” “at,” “my,” and “with,” and we reach 30% with just 18 words.
- Add “as,” “by,” “be,” “but,” “have,” “are,” “not,” “me,” and “from,” and we are well past the one-third mark with 35%.
- Add “he,” “or,” “about,” “they,” “an,” “so,” “his,” “we,” “one,” “all,” “if,” “comments,” “what,” and “out,” and we reach 40%, with only 41 words.
- To get to 45% you need 59 different words.
- To get to 50% you need 85 different words.
- To get to 55% you need 127 different words.
- To get to 60% you need 191 different words.
- To get to 65% you need 298 different words.
- To get to 70% you need 465 different words.
- To get to 75% you need 747 different words.
- To get to 80% you need 1,242 different words.
- To get to 85% you need 2,113 different words.
- To get to 90% you need 3,747 different words.
- To get to 95% you need 7,394 different words.
- To get to 100% you need the rest of the words in the English language (some large quantity far in excess of 20,000).
So why is it so hard to learn English?
Just to say I’m loving these analyses. I don’t have anything clever to say about them, but wow – they’re great!
Thanks, litlove. I owe much to you, of course, for giving me the idea. I have two more volunteers for this project. I’m thinking of doing your blog after that, if you don’t object.
Not at all!!!
Now I’ve spent some time trolling through your records for this project and am completely in love with what you’ve been doing. Being a translator and a fanatical reader, words are the very stuff of my day-to-day. Just wanted to tell you I think this is wonderful!
Can you graph that for me?
RE: So why is it so hard to learn English?
Because with 75% of the vocabulary you don’t necessarily comprehend 75% of the meaning. Here’s a sentence from the NY Times with four of 18 words missing:
The law enforcement official who said Mr. Shahzad had xxxxx himself also xxxxx more xxxxx of the xxxxx.
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