American English

Over the centuries, the various imperial interests of English speakers have spread over the world.  The willingness and facility of English, especially American English, to adopt words and expressions not only from the most widely spoken languages and from languages brought in by various immigrant groups, but also from other languages including many strange and exotic ones, has given it a large and extensive vocabulary, of which about 80% is foreign.  English doesn’t seem to meet words it doesn’t like.  This is one reason for the durability, flexibility, richness, vitality and popular appeal of today’s English and why English has become the fastest growing and the richest language in words. The fact that English has no genders, uncomplicated noun and pronoun cases, few endings and simple verb forms makes it an easy language to get by in.  But because of prepositions and many exceptions and inconsistencies, English has never been an easy language to learn well.

The Oxford English Dictionary stated that  more than 90 000 new words have entered English since 1900.  According to Michael Quinion of World Wide Words,  about 3,500 new words connected with biotechnology, electronics, politics, telecommunications, etc. have been added in the past decade.  And because English has become the lingua franca of the Internet, more English words are being created and non-English words co-opted than ever before.  Today, reasonable estimates of the number of words in English range from 500 000 to 900 000.  As for the average native speaker’s active or speaking vocabulary, it ranges between 15,000 and 30,000 words.  But the words one recognizes or understands (passive vocabulary) can exceed 100,000 items.