Vocabulary: optimal size and ways to increase. What is active and passive vocabulary and how to increase them at times

What do you think, how many words know the average person? Everyone remembers the famous excerpt from the immortal work of E. Petrova and I. Ilf "Twelve Chairs" on comparing the vocabulary of Shakespeare and Ellochka-ogoodoch. The same quotation can be cited as confirmation of the hypothesis that the human lexicon depends on the fact that this very person represents. For example, an uneducated person or a small child will be several hundred; Competent - several thousand.

And in such geniuses, like Pushkin or Shakespeare and up to fifteen thousand. By the way, the recent should be clarified. The four-volume "Pushkin language dictionary" has 21 191 words. Scientists counted exactly such a number of words used in all letters and works of the famous Russian poet. The vocabulary of the great English playwright is slightly less - about fifteen thousand words. But according to some data, they are about eighteen thousand. In relation to ordinary people, the picture looks somewhat different. But first we will understand what Lexicon is. We also define the concepts of a passive and active dictionary. So...

What is lexicon?

From the ancient Greek means "word", "turnover of speech". The exact lexicon sounds like this: the connection of the words of a language, part of the words or language, which is owned by a specific person or a certain group of people. The vocabulary is the central part of the language that refers to generates and transmits knowledge of any phenomena or objects. In other words, this is a language section that studies words, pronunciation, the composition of speech, etc.

Passive and active dictionary

When it comes to a certain set of words that a person uses daily in his speech, which uses for the expression of his feelings and thoughts, this implies an active vocabulary. The consumption and combinatorics of such words can be diverse. But it's all the same "instrument" of thoughts, feelings, actions. In the case when a person does not use certain words, but knows their meaning (often very close), learns in the readable text, then there is a passive vocabulary. Passive lexicon include special use: neologisms, archaisms, many dialectisms and the like.

Words in Lexicon

It should be noted, returning to the question of what Lexikon is that active and passive dictionaries for each person are individual. It depends on the age, profession, the general cultural level, personal qualities, tastes, and even the place of residence of a person. According to statistics, an active dictionary of an adult with higher education is seven-nine thousand words. Passive - twenty-twenty-four thousand. Although in everyday communication we are bypassed only one or two thousand words. It is said that the possibilities of human memory are almost endless. Therefore, you can safely increase your vocabulary and learn foreign words, thereby enriching Russian lexicon.

It is believed that a person at the dawn of existence was not much richer than in some animals. If, for example, the "Language" number has 10 simple signals, the "Language" of Pavian - 18, then at a primitive person, like the chimpanzee, "vocabulary" barely exceeded 30 signals - screams.

With the development of society, the speech of a person was constantly enriched with new words. Published in 1956-1965 of the Academy of Sciences "Dictionary of Modern Russian" in 17 volumes contains 120480 words.

How fast do children master speech? If a child at the age of one year knows only three words, then six months later his vocabulary increases to 26-28 words. In four years, he already knows about 1000 words, and at six and a half years announcing an average of 2 thousand words and understands the meaning of another 6 thousand.

Scientists conducted research and calculated that in the works of the ancient Roman poet, Horace occurs 6084 different words; The English poet of Milton - about 8 thousand words; In Homer's poems - about 9 thousand words; In the creations of Shakespeare - 15 thousand words (according to other data - up to 24 thousand words), in the writings of Pushkin - 21 thousand words.

It is curious to compare the number of words that use ordinary people with the dictionaries of great writers. According to psychologists, a teenager in 14 years has been enjoyed 9 thousand words, the average adult consumes 11,700 words, and the person is educated - up to 13,500 words.

I wonder how many words do a person say daily? It depends on temperament, profession and other conditions. Scientists still installed the average number: 30 thousand words. At the same time, a person speaks on average at a speed of 125-160 words per minute, and thinks the same words twice as fast.

Recognized "talkers", according to research, are the French. The average speech speed is 350 syllables per minute. The Japanese were attached to them - 310 syllables and the Germans are not lagging behind - 250 syllables. Polynesia and Melanesia are an average of 50 slings per minute.

The most silent nation in the world are Finns. The Canadians follow them. The most spelled and loud are Italians, Brazilians and Mexicans.

Is it useful to talk? It is useful - the American Professor Williams says so. Multiculate people are subject to various kinds of stress, since they do not give the exit of the energy accumulated in them. And as a result, it is prematurely aging.

And one more curious data. Experts calculated that each person on average says one hour per day. For life, this is about 2.5 years. If everything uttered by man for his life to fix on paper, a thousand volumes of 400 pages will be obtained in each.

For a long time, many people think that women say more than men. But recently, scientists checked and denied this opinion, having established that, in general, both men, and women utter the same number of words, and therefore boltles equally.

Every day we communicatewith other people, pronounce hundreds of words, we work with documents, looking through the Internet pages, rewrite with friends and relatives, read magazines and newspapers, watch movies and TV shows. In the process of communication, transmission and perception of information, our consciousness processes many words. How many words you need to know a person to fully communicate, know the world and the surrounding reality?

According to various assessments of scientistsIn English, about one million words, in Russian - from two hundred to five hundred thousand, Czech has about fifty thousand words. But this does not mean at all that in order to master the tongue, you need to learn such a huge amount of words. The fact is that our vocabulary is divided into two types - active and passive. Active vocabulary are words that a person knows and actively uses. Words, whose value is a person knows, but which it rarely uses a passive vocabulary. Of course, the passive stock is several times more active. Researchers of creativity William Shakespeare calculated that in his works he used about twenty thousand words, in the literary heritage of Karel Chapeka there are almost thirty thousand words. However, this does not mean that in everyday life, the great writers have expressed difficult and vessels, using all their lexical baggage.

According to the estimates of linguists, Vocabulary, which European, including the average Russian, is in everyday life, is about a thousand words. Active vocabulary is about two or three thousand words. Thus, for spending the language at the initial level, several hundreds of frequently used words are enough. Here is the approximate gradation of the volume of the vocabulary:

1. 400-800 words- lexical luggage required for the basic level of language knowledge;
2. up to 1500 words - stock that allows us to explain and read literature at the initial level;
3. up to 3000 words- The stock, with which you can confidently communicate on the household level and fluently reading non-specialized literature;
4. 5000 wordsin the lexical baggage will provide free reading the press and specialized literature;
5. 8000 wordsenough for comprehensive communication, reading literature of any degree of complexity, viewing television programs and films.

Should be consideredThese figures are only an approximate assessment of the number of words necessary for communication at a certain level, and, as a result, the number of words that need to know the wishing to explore a foreign language. Note that the active vocabulary is dynamic, it changes depending on which a person lives in what he works, where it works, etc. For example, the specifics of human work determines the lexical luggage used by him in labor activity. Therefore, it is important not only to expand the active vocabulary, but also to ensure that the words do not disappear from use and did not go from the asset to the passive.

There are various waysenrichment of the active vocabulary stock. Consider some of them:

1. The most common, effective and affordable method- Method of live communication. When communicating two interlocutors, as a rule, the mutual enrichment of their vocabularies.
2. Reading out loudallows you to use not only visual, but also auditory memory, facilitating and speeding up the memorization process.
3. Retelling read. When retelling the read brain actively processes the information received, while you need to try to maximize those words from the text that met for the first time or caused difficulty.
4. Interesting and useful work with a synonym dictionary. Many words have a number of synonyms, and a small game, the purpose of which - with the help of a dictionary, to replace the words in the text on synonyms as possible, significantly expand the vocabulary.

The richer vocabulary of manMoreover, Emko, colorfully and accurately, he can express his feelings and thoughts, the brighter of his picture of the world. It is necessary to strive to replenish the vocabulary of not only the studied, but also your native language. Especially relevant, this is presented for the carriers of the Russian language, which the French writer Proster Merima spoke so wonderful: "Russian, as far as I can judge him, is the richest of all European lawlessness and seems to be instrumented to express the finest shades. Gifted with wonderful complication, connected to clarity, he is content with one word to transmit thoughts when whole phrases would take to another language. "

The task of the study was to determine the volume of passive vocabulary of carriers of the Russian language. The measurement was carried out with the help in which respondents were asked to note the familiar words from a specially composed sample. According to the test rules, the word was considered "familiar" if the respondent could define at least one sense. The test technique is described in detail. To increase the accuracy of the test and identify the respondents passing it inactivity, non-existent words were added to the test. If the respondent noted at least one such word as a familiar, its results were not taken into account. More than 150 thousand people took part in the study (the test accurately passed - 123 thousand).

First, analyze the influence of age on the vocabulary.

The graph shows advanced the distribution obtained. For example, the lowest curve (10th percentile) for 20 years gives 40 thousand words. This means that 10% of the respondents of this age have vocabulary below this value, and 90% are higher. The central curve dedicated to the blue corresponds to such a vocabulary factory that half of the respondents of the relevant age showed the result worse, and half is better. The highest curve - the 90th percentyl - cuts off the result, above which only 10% of respondents with a maximum vocabulary reserve were shown.

From the graph, you can see the following:

1. Vocabulary is growing with a practically constant speed of up to about 20 years, after which its speed is reduced, coming to not for 45 years. After this age, the vocabulary is almost not changing.
2. During training at school, the teenager teaches 10 words per day. This value seems unnaturally large, but is explained by the fact that in the test, derivatives were taken into account separately, as independent.
3. By the time of release from school, a teenager knows 51 thousand words.
4. During the study at school, the vocabulary increases by about 2.5 times.
5. After the release from the school and until the middle-aged achievement, a person will know 3 new words a day and the day.
6. After reaching 55 years old, the vocabulary starts to decline somewhat. This may be associated with the forgetting of words that are not used long enough. Interestingly, this age approximately coincides with retirement.

Now we divide all respondents to the group in terms of education. The following graph shows medians of the vocabulary of these groups. Curves begin and end in different places due to the fact that the statistics in all groups are different - for example, respondents with an unfinished secondary education older than 45 were not enough for the results to be statistically significant, so I had to break the corresponding curve so early.

From the graphics, you can find out that

1. Perhaps saturation of the vocabulary occurs at different ages depending on education. So, at respondents with secondary special education, saturation can be determined in the area of \u200b\u200b43 years old, with higher-time - in 51 years old, candidates and doctors - in 54 years. This could be explained by the specifics of the respondents' work - most likely, the holders of a degree scientist continue to study various literature even in adulthood. Or a permanent life in a university environment, with its abundance of communication with educated people of various specializations, constantly throws new words. However, from a technical point of view, such conclusions should not be done yet - the resulting curves are quite noisy, and it is very difficult to determine exactly where saturation begins. Perhaps the further set of statistics will allow to see the dependence of the age of saturation from the level of education (if it is) is more clearly.
2. The difference in the vocabulary between those who entered the university, but did not die, and those who passed this path to the end are practically no (students: this does not mean that you can not go to lectures).

Now we will exclude the influence of age, leaving only the respondents over 30 years old in the sample. This will concentrate on education.

From the schedule, we see the following:

1. The respondents who ended only by the School know an average of 2-3 thousand words more than those who have not completed it at one time.
2. Vocabulary among those received secondary or secondary special education is practically no different and averages 75 thousand words.
3. Students in universities and institutes (and not necessarily completed them) know an average of 81 thousand words.
4. Candidates and doctors of sciences know an average of 86 thousand words. Thus, the scientific degree adds about 5 thousand units of the vocabulary compared with higher education.
5. Education, of course, affects the size of the vocabulary stock. However, the spread within each group with the same formation is much larger than the difference between the average values \u200b\u200bof groups. In other words, the person who did not finish the school may well know more words than a candidate of science. These are concrete figures - 20% of respondents with unfinished secondary education, which showed the best result for their group, have a vocabulary that exceeds the vocabulary of half of respondents with a degree scientist. Most likely, they are more reading on different topics, they are interested in and disassembled in more areas.

The resulting studies of the vocabulary stock - tens of thousands of words - seem quite large. There are two reasons for it. First, a passive vocabulary was measured (the words that a person finds out in the text or hearing), and not an active vocabulary (words that a person uses in speech or in a letter). These stocks differ at times - passive is always much larger. Calculated vocabularies of writers, for example, are active. Secondly, in the test, all derivatives were taken into account separately (for example, "work" and "work", or "city" and "urban").

Separately, I would like to note that the results obtained do not provide an idea of \u200b\u200bthe vocabulary of the "average" (if there is such a generally) of the carrier of the Russian language. For example, the level of education of respondents who passed the test, significantly higher than all-Russian - 65% of respondents have a higher education, whereas in Russia there are only 23% (according to the All-Russian Census 2010). Then, it is obvious that the respondents who have passed the Internet test are mainly active Internet users, and it also makes a sample specific (mainly for the elderly). In the end, not everyone is interesting to determine their vocabulary, among our own respondents such - 100%. It is logical to assume that the results of the dictionary reserve obtained in such a special sample must be somewhat higher than the "average".

So, the data obtained revealed a strong dependence of the vocabulary from age, and more weak - on the level of education. Obviously, there are other factors affecting the vocabulary - reading, communication, work, hobby, lifestyle. All this is the topics for the following studies.

Vocabulary is a set of words of a native language for a person, understandable to him by the meaning and applied in communication. It consists of words that are constantly used in oral and written speech, as well as words understandable due to a conversation or reading literature.

Severe two types of vocabulary:

• Active. This is a margin of words daily used by a person in speech when communicating with the surrounding people.
• Passive. These are words not used in communication, but acquaintances for rumor and content.

Active and passive vocabulary contains unequal indicators of the volume of words. The active vocabulary of the adult man greatly exceeds passive. The volume of words in both dictionaries are prone to constant changes. They are able to increase if a person finds out new terms, reads, develops or decrease.

Active and passive dictionary can be reduced as a result of the age when words forgetting or with termination of use in communication occurs. In this case, the words will disappear from the vocabulary of the person or will be replaced with new ones.

Assess the exact volume of the stock of words from the average person is a difficult task. No one knows exactly what it must be in the content and number of words. The guideline in this question is the dictionary of the Russian language V. I. Daly, who contains about two hundred thousand words and the explanatory dictionary of Ozhegov, the volume of 70 thousand Russian words.

Of course, it is clear that such a volume of words is not only the smarter person. Human memory is not able to accommodate such a number of information, without harm to health.

To determine the volume of words among carriers of the Russian language, an interesting study was recently carried out. It was carried out in the form of testing, where those who wish were noted in the list provided and the words used by them. Words were noted only in case of a complete understanding of the definition.

To improve the quality of testing and sorting unreliable information in the lists attended non-existent notation. The presence in the questionnaire subject at least one word from non-existent and marked as a friend was considered unreliable information and was not taken into account.

During the work carried out, the following data were obtained:

• A person's passive dictionary increases every year until 20 years of age. Next, the pace of development is reduced, gradually disappearing after 40 years. At this age and until the end of the life, the margin of words in humans remains unchanged.
• Studying at school adds children to a passive dictionary to 10 words every day. Active and passive vocabulary is constantly growing.
• By the end of study, adolescents own an average of 50 thousand words.
• School time increases the growth of words by almost 3 times.
• After graduating from school, the passive human dictionary is suspended in growth and averages 3-4 words daily.
• In 55 years, the supply of words continues its decline, due to irreversible worsening of memory and the use of certain words in practice.

The study estimated the level of education of the subjects by receiving interesting conclusions. It turns out that possession of the greatest volume of people in humans occurs in the unequal moment of life. Average special education implies an end to the growth of words at 40 years of age, and higher a little later - after 50 years. Such a gap in 10 years is due to the discrepancy of the work performed and the position occupied by people with different education. Some people have been reading scientific books in 50 years and receive new knowledge due to the specifics of the work or at their own desire for self-education.

An interesting fact was also revealed, which showed that the subjects who have developed in an educational institution and who have not completed it for personal reasons have the same passive dictionary.

The supply of adult people with different levels of education:

• The passive stock of words has the same indicators in people with secondary education and secondary special. It varies within 70-75 thousand words.
• People who have received a higher education or who have not graduated from the institute have a stock in their baggage from 80 thousand words.
• Formed people, candidates of science have a rich vocabulary in 86 thousand words, which is 6 thousand more than those who have received higher education.

The resulting education, of course, affects the margin of human words, but not 100%. A man is making a huge contribution to the development of the lexicon, constantly self-improvement and self-education. Therefore, it is easy to meet a person who ended only a school with a vocabulary more than several times than that has received a higher education. The main role in this question plays sociability, the genus of classes and the lifestyle of a person.

The study does not give a complete picture of the vocabulary of the average Russian person, as it contains small errors. But despite this helps to determine the connection of the stock of words with age and level of education.

How to expand your lexicon

There are no universal ways to increase words in the lexicon of the native language. Each person chooses what to approach only him. To replenish the vocabulary, several methods developed by polyglites will help to study a foreign language.

To increase the passive vocabulary:

• Reading literature.

The more books a man reads more often, the richer and more interesting is his speech. With well-widths are nice to communicate and spend time. This is a universal way to enrich the reserve of new words. The quality of the chosen literature has not the last value. Preference in the choice is better to give by popular science books, classical literature, avoiding modern "soap" novels or detectives in them, definitely not to find new words in proper use.

• Interested in the meaning of incomprehensible words.

Always interest the meaning of incomprehensible words or new terms at the interlocutor, you do not need to skip them past the ears. During communication, the new information is much easier and can be restored faster if necessary in memory. If a new interesting word sounded from the speakers on the radio, then its value can be spacked in a special.

• Dictionaries.

Each competent person should have a home a set of dictionaries that need to be time to periodically. This is the explanatory dictionary of V. I. Dalya, Ozhegova, as well as a "Dictionary of stresses for radio and television workers." It will help restore gaps in the strokes and contains many interesting words.

"A vocabulary of stress for radio and television workers" is produced since 1960. Its authors are M. V. Garva and F. L. Ageenko. The history of the creation of a vocabulary of the vocabulary for radio workers and television began with the release in 1951 the director's reference book, and after 3 years already issued a "vocabulary of stress. To help the recorder. "

The basis of all dictionaries for radio workers and television was the stocks of "heavy" words accumulated in the card file during the formation of the first radio in the era of the USSR. Replenishing the radio files of the radio and television happened constantly. Many words have not entered the dictionaries. "Dictionary of radio and television" contains the name of geographical names, the names of the works of art, surnames and the names of people.

How to expand active vocabulary

To increase the vocabulary stock, you will need a person's ability to translate words from a passive dictionary to active. This will help the following ways:

• Notes.

Record new words on the leaflets along with the value and put off the house in those places where they will more often rush into the eyes. This method will help more effectively remember information without memorizing.

• Associative series.

To memorize the words, build a suitable association to it. It can be aimed at smelling, taste, motor, tactile characteristics or tied to the color scheme. The result depends on the imagination of a person, and the desire to consolidate the information received. Associtative row helps to remember difficult words and easier to recall at the right time.

There are also exercises to develop the stock of words. One of the most effective is the oral exercise on the composition of history. To do this, you need to try to tell a little story, using one noun, then only verbs or adjectives. This is a difficult exercise. It helps to use the existing margin of words, while refreshing them in the memory of a person.