how many English words does an English speaker know?
I guess somewhere between 1,000 and 100,000 - depending on your definition of âwordâ and âEnglish speakerâ. I googled the title of your thread and here´s one of the more interesting results: http://www.streetsmartlanguagelearning.com/2013/02/how-many-words-does-average-native.html
Itâs a big difference between âto knowâ and âto useâ- a native speaker can guess 50,000 words or more, but he\she really uses in a spoken language 2,000 words.
Where´d you get these numbers from? 2,000 words doesn´t sound like a lot.
âHow many English words does an English speaker know?â
How long is a piece of string? There are all sorts of speakers out there. You have to be more specific.
As Paule89 mentioned, a quick Google search will reveal some very interesting results. According to some research (Iâll have to look up the source when I get home), native speakers donât use much more than 5,000/6,000 words (or rather word families) on a daily basis. That is, allegedly, enough to understand 98% of what you usually hear or read.