Some languages are known for their tricky grammar rules or difficult pronunciations. But which language is known for having the biggest vocabulary? And does having the most words make a language more difficult to learn?
The answer to all these questions depends on your view of language and the different approaches to counting words in world languages. Find out which language has the most words, according to linguists and language dictionaries, and why some languages have more words than others.
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The 6 languages with the most words
Discovering which language has the most words depends on several factors. Counting the words in a language’s dictionary is one way to determine who has the most words in a language, but dictionaries sometimes exclude slang words and archaic words that aren’t in use anymore. Additionally, some dictionaries only include a headword (the word that begins a new dictionary entry) once, while others include all forms of a headword.
To find out which language has the most words, we used a combination of the language’s dictionary and any language projects designed to record its use. While the order of the languages may vary as their vocabularies shift and change, these languages currently have the largest vocabularies in the world.
1. English
With its many language influences and words borrowed from other cultures, English probably has the most words in a language. English is a Germanic language with vocabulary from many cultures, including Romance languages like French and Spanish.
So, how many words are in the English language? English contains between 470,000 and one million words, depending on whether you’re counting dictionary words or total words ever used in the language. Add the hundreds of new words added to dictionaries every year, combined with the many dialects and slang words used around the world, and the English vocabulary grows every time you use it!
2. Korean
Korean has almost as many words as English. In 2016, the National Institute of Korean Language launched the Urimalsaem (also known as the Woori Mal Saem). This open-source, online dictionary allows users to add Korean words for lexicographers to review and approve, making it a living document of Korean vocabulary.
When it comes to how many words are in the Korean language, we don’t have an exact number. However, the Urimalsaem began at over one million words and continues to increase every day.
3. Tamil
Officially, Tamil contains around 3.8 lakh (one hundred thousand) words. But an online Tamil dictionary known as the Sorkuvai lists its current word count at over one million words. This open-source dictionary also allows users to add Tamil words that they know, including slang words that may not appear in formal Tamil language guides.
The Sorkuvai includes Tamil words from many dialects, as well as over 100,000 Tamil words found in the Agarathi, another online dictionary. These vocabulary projects enable both ancient and modern Tamil words to coexist in one source.
4. Portuguese
There are more than 818,000 Portuguese words in the Aulete Digital, the primary online Portuguese dictionary. Priberam’s Dictionary of the Portuguese Language, a contemporary Portuguese dictionary, lists over 110,000 words that include common phrases and general vocabulary.
The true number of Portuguese words is likely between these numbers. However, like other languages, Portuguese continues to evolve and grow its vocabulary.
5. Swedish
The Svenska Akademiens ordbok (Swedish Dictionary) contains 511,960 Swedish words. Published by the Swedish Academy, the dictionary is accompanied by the Svenska Akademiens Ordlista, a dictionary that lists over 126,000 modern Swedish words and phrases.
Even though Swedish is a Germanic language like English, it has fewer words because it hasn’t had as many language influences. Though it includes loanwords from other Scandinavian languages, it isn’t as widely spoken as English, giving it fewer dialects to add to the total word count.
6. Arabic
You may have heard that Arabic has over 12 million words, which would put it at the top of the “most words in a language” list. But this figure comes from a book that lists all possible roots, not just the words that have a definition.
Linguists put the number of Arabic words closer to 200,000 distinct words. While it does include many root forms, Arabic does not include many words borrowed from other languages. Arabic’s many dialects and historical significance also make it very difficult to determine the exact number of words in the language.
How do languages add new words?
It would be more straightforward to find a list of languages with word counts that never change. But living languages are constantly shifting as old words fall out of use and new words begin to describe new situations and generations.
Here are a few ways that languages tend to expand, and which languages are more likely to use them.
Agglutinative languages
In agglutinative languages such as Turkish, Japanese, and Finnish, speakers regularly form new words as part of everyday speech. That’s because agglutinative languages easily combine morphemes, the smallest building blocks of meaning in a language, to create new words.
Some languages wind up with extremely long words created through agglutination, such as the Turkish word Çekoslovakyalılaştıramadıklarımızdanmışsınız, which translates to “You are one of those that we were not able to convert into Czechoslovakians.” But each new word counts as one more in a language’s vocabulary!
Compound words and portmanteaus
Some languages grow by adding two words together to create compound words. English is one such language, as we see from compound words like “firehouse” and “basketball.” New words also arise when you combine words into portmanteaus, which take pieces of two words (as in modern words like “chillax” and “hangry”).
Other Germanic languages, including Dutch and German, create new compound words and portmanteaus all the time. Some long German compound words can describe very specific situations!
Loanwords
When two cultures live near each other, they often exchange loanwords (borrowed words from another language). For example, English includes many loanwords from French as well as Spanish and other Romance languages. That’s one of the reasons the English language includes so many words.
Cultures that have historically been more isolated in their languages don’t include many loanwords at all. While many European languages include strong Arabic influences, for example, Arabic includes very few non-Arabic loanwords.
Slang words
No matter what language you learned first, you know that slang can dramatically change the way people speak. Some slang makes its way into official dictionaries (including the popular Gen Z term “yeet”!), while other slang words exist in casual conversations.
How many words do you need to know to be fluent?
Even if we did have a definitive answer to the number of words in a language, it wouldn’t be particularly useful to most language learners. An English dictionary may have hundreds of thousands of headwords, but the average native speaker only knows about 15,000-20,000 lemmas (think of a lemma as a word and all of its forms, like past tense, plural, etc.).
One linguistic professor estimates that people need to know just 800 lemmas of a language to understand 75% of daily conversations. That’s great news if you’re looking to learn a new language and feel like one million words is a tall order!
Learn a new language with Rosetta Stone, no matter the number of words
Knowing how many words a language has doesn’t tell you much about how difficult it is to learn. What matters are the several hundred most frequently used words, which Rosetta Stone can help you understand. Use helpful tools like the Rosetta Stone App to learn common phrases you’d use in everyday interactions, and get started on your new language learning journey today!
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