english, english language, english lingusitics, english as a second language, english as a foreign language,  english as the world

THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE - FACTS AND FIGURES:

How many words are there in the English language? The English Language: Facts and Figures What are the world's most widely spoken languages? In which countries is English the language spoken as a first language by the majority of the population? In which countries is English an official language? How many people speak English as a second language? How many people speak English as a foreign language? So how many speak English in total? How many people are learning English worldwide? What percentage of the internet is in English? What percentage of email messages are in English?? Which language has the most words? How many words does the average native speaker know? How many words does the average native speaker use in everyday speech? How many words do you need to learn in order to communicate in most situations? What is the longest word in the English language?

This is an impossible question to answer! It really depends on what words you want to count. But there are, at the very least, a quarter of a million distinct English words, excluding inflections, and words from technical and regional vocabulary. The unabridged Oxford English Dictionary has about 600,000.