How many words are there in the Japanese language?

[Brody]

I was reading an article last night which stated that were about 500,000 words in the English language. It also said the average person has a normal vocabulary of about 10,000 words.

Any ideas what it might be for Japanese? Total words and the number of words in a common person's vocabulary? I know the JLPT states that to pass level 1, one must know about 10,000 words and that such knowledge will enable the person to function normally in Japanese society. Would you agree that passing the JLPT 1 (ie knowing 10,000 words and corresponding grammar and being effecient in the use of both) would allow one to speak fluently or would one need even more?

[Tensei]

I dunno, but Im pretty sure I dont know 10,000 English words...I think that number is slightly exaggerated.

Or maybe I do know 10,000 words and Im not giving myself enough credit.

[Brody]

It's probably EVERY word you've ever heard. But yeah, if I really think about it, I can pull out some pretty random words.

Though again, I've heard that there are only like a hundred that a person uses really regularly. So, I think maybe it's best to just throw that article out; not really helping.

[Alan]

Try picking up an english dictionary, open a page at random and count the number of words you know well. Multiply by the number of pages in the dictionary. Using this method, I reckon I know well in excess of 10,000 english words, but many of them have related pronounciations & meanings. Many of them are really obscure.

I tried this on my Japanese dictionary, with the result of about 1200 words. Of course that is the number of words I recognise (in romaji or kana), rather than those I can use in spoken language, which is a lot less.

Unfortunately the number of words I recognise in Kanji, is limited to a few dozen

I wonder how many words children know at various ages. This would be a useful guide to fluency.

[Airth]

I'm not sure that the statistics are of very much use, but most reports I've seen claim the average native English speaker has a vocabulary of about 20,000 words. That, of course, includes a large amount of passive knowledge. I believe Shakespeare used somewhere in the region of 30,000 words.

When you really get into the vocabulary for the Japanese proficiency test you quickly find that it is somewhat limited. I think it's fair to say that everytime I pick up a book, watch TV, or just keep my ears open in my day to day life I come across words that are not listed all the way up to Level 1. I'll give you a few recent examples; 寝つき (netsuki=get to sleep) from TV a couple of nights ago; こけ (koke=moss) the simplest from a host of new words I heard on a nature walk yesterday; 少数派 (shousuuha=minority group) from a book about Miyazaki Hayao I was reading two nights ago); and 目出し棒 (medashibou=balaclava/ski mask) from JapanesePod101's Beginner Lesson #92. None of these words show up on the Level 1-4 vocabulary list I refer to.

But, think about this for a moment; the Advanced Oxford Learner's Dictionary manages to define 80,000 words with a set vocabulary of only 3,000 words. It takes skill and a certain level of grammar competence, but I believe you can successfully talk about pretty much any concept or idea you might have with between 3,000-5,000 Japanese words. Understanding the other person's point of view is a completely different matter, though.

[Bueller_007]

I'll give you a few recent examples; 寝つき (netsuki=get to sleep) from TV a couple of nights ago; こけ (koke=moss) the simplest from a host of new words I heard on a nature walk yesterday; 少数派 (shousuuha=minority group) from a book about Miyazaki Hayao I was reading two nights ago); and 目出し棒 (medashibou=balaclava/ski mask) from JapanesePod101's Beginner Lesson #92. None of these words show up on the Level 1-4 vocabulary list I refer to.

It's 目出し帽 (帽=hat) not 目出し棒 (棒=stick).

[Airth]

I don't know, I reckon the stick sounds more interesting than a hat. But, thanks for pointing out my slopping typing, Bueller.

[niedec]

I believe the confusion of how many words an English speaker knows on average comes from an old 19th century book entitled How to Write and Speak Correctly. It was relatively popular at the time, and in its introduction, claims that the average man knows 10,000 words, wheras most scholars boast 30,000 words. Shakespeare knew roughly 50,000 words, though all but 20,000 or so are archaic. I may have paraphrased that wrong as far as the numbers are concerned, but that's the gist of it.

You can download it for free at manybooks.net or by googling "project gutenburg".

It's over 100 years old, so it's in the public domain (along with most classic literature).

[Belton]

This might be of interest.
http://www.askoxford.com/oec/mainpage/oec02/?view=uk
It's an analysis of the OED corpus. Apparently 100 words make up 50% of it!
(The problem would be arranging those words and filling in the other 50% if you were trying to communicate with only those words)

And reading it, I had an interesting experience in the context of the current disscussion.
They use a word lemma that I'd never heard before, but because the first time they use it they explain it with a synonym I now now that word and could understand the passage. Even if they hadn't, I would have understood the word from the context.
Will I ever use lemma? unlikely. But it's now part of my vocabulary.

I think vocabulary works on several levels. Active and passive vocabularies would be different. Day to day speech is probably very limited and repetitive. Writing would have a larger vocabulary. Listening maybe more and reading the most. And I would say reading is how I expanded my English vocabulary. What that vocabulary is I don't know. Maybe it's more useful to measure it as an ability to read and understand the broadsheet newspapers.

So I would then guess that reading is the key to expanding an ability in Japanese.

I would also guess that with a very limited vocabulary you can communicate quite a lot.
As long as two things happen.
The native downshifts their vocabulary to near your level so you can understand the reply.
(As you would with children and as I find I do with non-native speakers)
The second thing is a willingness and ability of the learner speaker to cope with a limited vocabulary. To be able to rephrase to get an idea across instead of concentrating on an inability to translate the English phrase you have in your head.



Similar analysis is made of kanji in Japanese Newspapers
http://nozaki-lab.ics.aichi-edu.ac.jp/n ... kanji.html

with English definitions and other ways of grouping kanji
http://infohost.nmt.edu/~armiller/japan ... jifreq.htm

"However, according to a recent study (Chikamatsu, Yokoyama, Nozaki, and Long, in preparation), the 500 most frequently occurring characters cover approximately 80% of total kanji usage in newspapers. Furthermore, the top 1,000 most frequent characters covered 95% of total usage and the final 2,000 characters make up only 5% of the total use. Thus, if students know these most frequent 500 characters, they should comprehend the gist of most Japanese newspaper articles."
from
http://www.nuthatch.com/kanjicards/unicode.html

and the Java kanji 500 project is here
http://condor.depaul.edu/~sryner/kanjicards/

Which agrees with something I'd read before that 500 kanji is enough to get you reading. Of course they are base kanji, things get more difficult if you start factoring in compounds. Which starts to ask the question how many words do those 500 kanji make? And what constitutes a lemma in Japanese ?
But while I've looked at these lists, I'm not sure how useful it might be to just learn this list. My vocabulary acquisition is more about what words I need and what interesting words I come across rather than learning JLPT lists or frequency lists or Vocab lists from my textbook. (I just had a flashback to my schooldays where I had to learn lists of French vocab and the teacher would wallop you if you got a word wrong in an oral test the next day. It was one learning method I suppose but ultimately unsuccessful with me. My incentive was fear and not wanting to be hit rather than learning a language. What a waste )


Which leads me on to something I've been thinking about recently that words exist in a context. I wonder if it isn't better to learn phrases and sentences rather than word lists.

This is an interesting article about English Vocab teaching. It makes me realise how often a teacher or guide of some sort is needed to use words.
http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think ... ocab.shtml

[tiroth]

The 500 kanji comment is analogous to "100 words make up 50% of OED". It's true, but it is pretty challenging to find anything to read with those 500, since that is roughly the 5th-grade level.

In my experience:

I could start reading short stories/readers with around 500 kanji and 3000 words, with a LOT of looking up new vocab/kanji.
I could begin reading manga with around 1000 kanji and a vocabulary of around 4-5000 words, but there was a ton of content I didn't know.
I started my first real (but easy) novel at around 1500 kanji / 7000 words. There were about 5-6 words per page I didn't know.
I think to read an adult novel without looking up more than 1 word every couple of pages you'd need 2500-3000 kanji and probably 20-25000 words.

[Tensei]

It still doesnt feel like I know over 10,000 words. Im pretty well-literate (though I certainly dont type that way, and I often dont proofread anything I type) but 10,000 still seems a bit much.

And if I have to know 10,000 MORE for Japanese than I might as well give up now because it took me like half a day just to memorize 忙しい a few days ago. Half a day for 10,000 words is 5,000 days, but Ill give myself some leeway and say I only need to know 9,000 more for 2500 days due to the fact I can learn multiple words at once. Thats 6.8 years.

And thats not even including the 2000 Kanji Ill need to learn...

[ali17]

I was watching Leno and Mr. Sullifane from Chicago the movie (I don't remember his real name or the name of his caracter in the movie just the song he sings about nobody remembering that he is there) Anyway he was telling a story about him going around asking people hows their hole in Thai istead of how are you doing but he was saying the average English speaker uses 500 words on a daily basis compared to in Thai it is about 70. I was looking around and he seems to be correct. I was reading in a book about speech developement in kids and by age two they understand about 500 words,the words that are used on a daily basis by most native speakers, and by the time they are three can understand and speak upwards of 3,000-5,000 English words. My daughter is three and she is always using words that I didn't know she knew(good and bad), and using them in the correct context most of the time. Of course the more you speak and read to a kid the more words they pick up.

So I have been comparing my Japanese abilities with that of my daughters English and I am about where she was when she was about a year. I understant simple conversation and about 200 words consistantly.

My daughter listens to the podcast as well and she is picking up some things and her pronunciation is way better then mine.

[Belton]

I'm not sure how useful it is to quantify "how many words". It's what you do with them.
(There's the famous French novel that doesn't use the letter e (I think) and translations that have similar impossible constraints.)
It's what you need to say or read. It'd be nice to have a shortcut to fluency or some means to concentrate study on what will give the most practical returns for effort.

This writer has an interesting take on the maths of the 10,000 word vocabulary. And how vocabulary is acquired.
http://www.english-learning.co.uk/voc.html#v37
The whole essay is interesting reading, and has some good ideas I think. (see past the very old fashioned web presentation)

To return to original post. The only thing I'd say about JLPT as a measure of ability is it doesn't test speaking ability. It's very much like the passive language exams of old where reading and writing were what was important. It also doesn't test an ability to write. This is of course because of how the test is marked. To add an oral section and a composition section would mean hiring lots of examiners and markers. Up goes the cost.
However I think it'd be strange if you could pass JLPT1 and not be able to speak with some fluency.

But as a target or structure for study it's as good as any. But I would say JLPT is mainly about passing a test and the real world is much less structured and messy. Perhaps it's better to ask yourself what's your reason for learning Japanese? That might be what guides your studies, and the more specific you can be the better.

As for giving up when confronted by the enormity of the task of learning a language. It can be done. It amazes me how many people learn English. I'd hate to have to learn English; it's much more difficult than Japanese. (writing system aside )
It comes down to time, effort and motivation. To throw more ill defined numbers in here, I've heard it said it can take 5 years in the host culture to become fluent in a language.

The size of the task is one of the interesting things. There may never be an end to me learning Japanese. Never a point where I'll be able to say I've done it all now what?
Indeed, I doubt I'll ever be able to read adult books, or watch a film. I'd need to study and practice full time which unfortunately I can't do. But books and films are translated and I'l just struggle along to understand my Japanese friends and when I go to Japan I know enough to catch a train, get a hotel, get fed, ask directions, and even meet interesting people.

[tiroth]

Nice post Belton. The good news is it isn't any hard to learn 10,000 words than 500, it just takes a little longer. Not as long as you might think though since you start speeding up as you get better.

[Airth]

This writer has an interesting take on the maths of the 10,000 word vocabulary. And how vocabulary is acquired.
http://www.english-learning.co.uk/voc.html#v37
The whole essay is interesting reading, and has some good ideas I think.

Belton, that was really interesting. I could identify with a lot of what was written, especially the tendency to jump to the dictionary to just confirm the 'exact' meaning of a word one more time. I think it takes a leap of faith to follow this method; I wonder if I can.

It still doesnt feel like I know over 10,000 words.

Tensei, assuming you are a native English speaker, you definitely know well in excess of 10,000 words. If you get your hands on a list of the words required for the Japanese proficiency test with English translations, I bet there would be very few words you didn't know and a huge amount missing.
Also, as Tiroth says, learning vocabulary does seem to get easier and easier in most cases. Whatever you do, don't give up!