Test your (English) Vocabulary

[anonymaus]

http://www.theapricity.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=6471&stc=1&d=1291235582

How many words do you know?

http://www.testyourvocab.com/

Non-native speakers are encouraged to participate, as is anybody under the age of 18!

The test only takes a couple of minutes and provides percentile rankings based on previous results.

[The Lawspeaker]

Your total vocabulary size is estimated to be: 26,900 words (http://testyourvocab.com/?r=11896)
I didn't know much from the half of the 2nd page onwards but still not a bad score.. that means if the score is correct.

[Vulpix]

Your total vocabulary size is estimated to be:

27,900 words

can i has my free internets nao?

[Don Brick]

My estimated vocabulary size is 17 400 words. Not too great. :( I guess vocabulary has always been my weak spot when it comes to English. I believe it´s time to practice a little more. I got this bigass Webster´s Dictionary last summer just waiting to be devoured. Oh what fun! Or not. :wink

[anonymaus]

I'm a native English speaker and I scored 38,500. The word which most eluded me was sparge. Sparge? Seriously? xD


can i has my free internets nao?

http://i.imgur.com/y9CWj.jpg

[Beorn]

26,800

The rest never get used. They should have a test where you get asked real English words, not these sad words that only see the light of day from the turn of a dictionary page.

[Brynhild]

As far as I'm concerned, it's the quality of the language, not the quantity of words.

[anonymaus]

As far as I'm concerned, it's the quality of the language, not the quantity of words.

You're welcome to start a discussion thread about the quality of language. What was your score?

[antonio]

Just 6,500 words. But I deeply disagree.

[Ushtari]

6,440

[Sabinae]

33.900 words
http://testyourvocab.com/?r=12045

[Treffie]

32,200

One of my fave words is purloin, it used to be habit of mine when I was a kid :thumb001:

[Electronic God-Man]

I only got 27,500 words and I am guessing that is middling range.

I do agree that most of these words are not used too often, so what's the point really?

[Electronic God-Man]

33.900 words
http://testyourvocab.com/?r=12045

Smart as she is, I refuse to believe a non-native speaker has outscored me! :eek:

:p

[Electronic God-Man]

They give you different words if you do it again....got 28,900 the second time.

[Electronic God-Man]

Smart as she is, I refuse to believe a non-native speaker has outscored me! :eek:

:p

Ho ho!! After asking a Sicilian friend to take it she pointed out that many of the words are derived from Latin...and this is why our Romance speaking friends appear to have larger English vocabs then the native English-speakers!!

I cry foul.

[Loddfafner]

35,300 so I should get working on the dictionary.

[ikki]

29100

Yeah.. ragamoffyn, bugbear.. :D See D&D is good for you.. lol

[Piparskeggr]

Your total vocabulary size is estimated to be:
40,500 words...

BTW, sparge - to wash boiled malt grains with hot water after one drains off the mashing water (aka wort) to gain any residual sugars for brewing beer or ale.

[la bombe]

26,400. I haven't seen some of those words since high school, they brought back memories of high school English vocab tests :p

[ikki]

My estimated vocabulary size is 17 400 words. Not too great. :( I guess vocabulary has always been my weak spot when it comes to English. I believe it´s time to practice a little more. I got this bigass Webster´s Dictionary last summer just waiting to be devoured. Oh what fun! Or not. :wink

Thou shalt parttake in your studies or a bugbear in tatterdamelion will defenstrate you! :D

[Piparskeggr]

Thou shalt partake in your studies or a bugbear in tatterdemalion will defenstrate you! :D

I prefer abacination as a punishment to defenestration, however, and particolor in my raiment.

[Eldritch]

Your total vocabulary size is estimated to be:
36,600 words

Blame this place:

http://www.davidsson.fi/korjausrakentaminen/metsatalo/fi_FI/metsatalo/_files/11041778970000322/default/metsatalo_paa_aula.jpg

[Osweo]

I was honest and got 33, 600. Puts me just under 85% or summat.

There's a few I can't define, but do use, however! :D Bluffing is the secret to looking clever...

I hate the Latin thing, too. I would love to nativise my vocab, but am unsure how to do it. Passively, I'm fine, but producing a good English word in place of a straightforward Latinism is often difficult. :(

[Piparskeggr]

Your total vocabulary size is estimated to be:
40,500 words...

BTW, sparge - to wash boiled malt grains with hot water after one drains off the mashing water (aka wort) to gain any residual sugars for brewing beer or ale.

My wife thought I scored low, she hates that I do crosswords in ink.

Took it a second time...44,700 words...

[Grumpy Cat]

Your total vocabulary size is estimated to be: 34,400 words

Thing is, so many of the uncommon ones on those lists are loan words from French and that's how I know what they mean... I didn't know they existed in English and probably wouldn't use them when speaking English (ie maladroit). Does that count?

[Eldritch]

There's a few I can't define, but do use, however! :D Bluffing is the secret to looking clever...


There were quite a few words on the test I know the meaning of, but have never used, at least in spoken language. In fact, quite a few of them I probably would not even know how to pronounce correctly.

[Brynhild]

You're welcome to start a discussion thread about the quality of language. What was your score?

Thank you but I will decline. What I will point out, however, is the importance of articulating the words you do know and use regularly, as opposed to knowing a shitload of words which you would rarely, if ever, use in common terms. In other words, you have bugger all hope of articulating those sort of words unless you want to use some kind of jargon.


They give you different words if you do it again....got 28,900 the second time.

My first score was 23 600. Second score was 28 000. I was already mulling over the words used from another language before coming across this following quote:


Your total vocabulary size is estimated to be: 34,400 words

Thing is, so many of the uncommon ones on those lists are loan words from French and that's how I know what they mean... I didn't know they existed in English and probably wouldn't use them when speaking English (ie maladroit). Does that count?

A very insightful validation. Only people who speak a specific language apart from English would know these words. It is in my considered opinion that this test is a fallacy, especially given that my second score increased by nearly 5 000 points. :)

[Comte Arnau]

34 words.

Me be fucking spic.

[Grumpy Cat]

A very insightful validation. Only people who speak a specific language apart from English would know these words. It is in my considered opinion that this test is a fallacy, especially given that my second score increased by nearly 5 000 points. :)

Yeah, but half the English language comes from French, that puts francophones at an advantage.

[Sahson]

I only got 27,500 words and I am guessing that is middling range.

I do agree that most of these words are not used too often, so what's the point really?

My grandparents use a lot of those words, it's where I've heard a lot of those words... I personally think it is a bad representative indicator though. I got 28,200.

Either way theres apparently 540,000 english words...


Yeah, but half the English language comes from French, that puts francophones at an advantage.

And the english a slight advantage in learning French as opposed to German.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/18/Origins_of_English_PieChart_2D.svg/600px-Origins_of_English_PieChart_2D.svg.png

[Grumpy Cat]

And the english a slight advantage in learning French as opposed to German.

True. I used to work with French as a Second Language students. The Anglos usually pick it up really fast and can hold down an intelligent conversation in a week or two (but for some reason they always learn how to swear first :confused: ).

[Sahson]

True. I used to work with French as a Second Language students. The Anglos usually pick it up really fast and can hold down an intelligent conversation in a week or two (but for some reason they always learn how to swear first :confused: ).

This is what was discussed at Unilang. An English speaker will learn French very fast, but a French speaker will learn Italian faster then the English speaker. A German speaker will learn Swedish, faster then the English speaker. However the English speaker will learn Swedish faster then the French or Italian.

The thing is most of English is Latin or French origin, and the latin words that english has is very similar to the french words themselves. But English has a lot of Germanic words like Mardy. The belief is that an Anglophone can learn a Germanic and romance language very well, but not as fast as languages that are closely related to other Germanic or romantic languages...

http://www.qedoc.org/en/images/thumb/2/28/Origins_of_English_PieChart.png/300px-Origins_of_English_PieChart.png

[Groenewolf]

Am I the only one to get a round number.

20,000

Interesting info on the side bar :


Did you know?

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) contains over 300,000 entries, which take up over 20,000 printed pages.

Maybe time to buy the OED and do some studying.

[Crossbow]

I got 9720, pretty retarded you could say.

[Eldritch]

Am I the only one to get a round number.

20,000

Interesting info on the side bar :



Maybe time to buy the OED and do some studying.

Actually I don't think browsing through dictionaries is a very good way to expand one's active vocabulary. A much better way would be to simply devote some time to reading quality prose by a native English speaker.

[Beorn]

This is what was discussed at Unilang. An English speaker will learn French very fast, but a French speaker will learn Italian faster then the English speaker. A German speaker will learn Swedish, faster then the English speaker. However the English speaker will learn Swedish faster then the French or Italian.

The thing is most of English is Latin or French origin, and the latin words that English has is very similar to the french words themselves. But English has a lot of Germanic words like Mardy. The belief is that an Anglophone can learn a Germanic and romance language very well, but not as fast as languages that are closely related to other Germanic or romantic languages...

Black = English.
Red = English/French.
Blue = Foreign words.

It's funny looking at them all.

[Sahson]

Black = English.
Red = English/French.
Blue = Foreign words.

It's funny looking at them all.

I wouldn't have classified it like that... but the main germanic words are the essentials; prepositions, pronouns, etc...

[Blossom]

My estimated vocabulary size is 17 400 words. Not too great. :( I guess vocabulary has always been my weak spot when it comes to English. I believe it´s time to practice a little more. I got this bigass Webster´s Dictionary last summer just waiting to be devoured. Oh what fun! Or not. :wink

Haha..beat your ass up, darling! ;)


Your total vocabulary size is estimated to be:


28,000

words

Tbh, I associated a lot of words with other germanic languages and even latin origin :) it helps a lot...and realized spanish vocabulary do help a lot when learning English.

[Arrow Cross]

15 000 (http://testyourvocab.com/?r=623209) words. Miserable. There certainly is much work to do here yet.

[askra]

only 11,000 words :embarrassed

i don't know great part of words of the second step of the test

[Rosenrot]

my english sux |o|

4,370 words

[Amapola]

11,600...

:stop00010:

[Logan]

my english sux |o|

4,370 words

No bad. How many are truely needed.

Mine 34,400. I only wish I could correctly spell as much.


hOSYiT2iG08

[curiousman]

10,900

[rhiannon]

I am very impressed at how well many non-native speakers have done on this test. AWESOME!

[Sahson]

35,700

[Albion]

40,200 I usually read a lot of factual texts so have encountered a lot of these archaic words. Not bad for someone who was once classed as dyslexic I think.

[Lábaru]

xD 7,120 words xD

[BiałaZemsta]

13,600 NOT GOOD!

[Rainraven]

25,500 :)

I can't believe those were all real words :eek:

[Groenewolf]

23000 words according to this test.

[Daos]

I scored 14,400, because I didn't know the meaning of 54 words...:shrug: Meh, I'm rather pleased with my English and won't (actively) seek to improve it. I'd rather continue learning Russian and Polish and hone my German skills.http://e.deviantart.net/emoticons/w/work.gif

[rina80]

34,300 words!

Some of those words were :eek::mmmm::crazy:

:laugh:

[GregSamsa]

28.300 words, Yay!!

[Stefan]

24,300 (http://testyourvocab.com/?r=738842)(average for 17-18 year old is 22605-22777, but I doubt the average teenager would bother with this, so it's probably skewed from the norm.)

It will be interesting to see how much this will change as I age. I agree that multi-lingual people - specifically Romance-speakers - probably have an easier time with these kind of measurements. It is a very common occurrence where having taken French classes helps me with learning English vocabulary, for example. It makes it a lot easier to split up the word, and determine the meaning of the root. This is usually what I try to do when I come upon a word I do not know, in a book for example, before I look into a dictionary to verify my thoughts. But when it comes down to it, the point of language is to bring an understanding across, and to learn or know many uncommon words in standard language will probably hinder this ability to bring understanding, although it is never bad to learn more words for the rare instances in which they might be used.

[Queen B]

Only 14,900

[Caeruleus]

28,600 not very bright :(

http://testyourvocab.com/?r=1102463

[Hevneren]

I don't think I did too well. 23,700 words. I taught myself English and it's been about 10 years since I last learned English in school.

[arcticwolf]

Holy smokes. Bunch of these words are not in common use. Only uberdweebs will do well on this test :p

[gandalf]

My vocabulary has been estimated up to 14 300 words !!!

What a nice surprise .

[kkk77]

5,940 words