Thread: How many words are there in the Spanish language?

How many words are there in the Spanish language?

There are many sites out there to help you find factoids; please try and look for some of them on your own.

How Many Words Does Spanish Have? - Size of the Spanish Vocabulary
How many words in the spanish language? - Ask.com Web Search

Cheers.

"Spanish dictionaries, on the other hand, typically have around 100,000 words."

That's a lot of words, but not as many as English. Of course, the dictionaries probably don't have all the words.

the number of words is almost the same as in English, but you need to know a lot more verbs in Spanish to communicate than in English, because of the verbs form

100,000 words... that's a lot learning to do in how many years you can learn them all?

So there over 600,000 in English...how long did it take you to become fluent?
Its just kind of a moot question; modern languages change all the time, and borrow words from other languages constantly--its the hallmark of a living tongue, linguistic evolution.

Cheers.

Originally Posted by Nosfer

100,000 words... that's a lot learning to do in how many years you can learn them all?

Spanish and other latin languages are hard to learn because of the verb tenses that suffer a lot of variations, so if you are a native english speaker, I have to say it will not be easy, you'll need several years, don't know how many... 4 or 5 at least, I'd say

Oh that's just silly! 6 months-to a year if you put some time into it; the tenses in Romance languages at least have the advantage of regular rules of conjugation with stems and suffixes. Its always a ton of fun to try and explain why English verbs conj. the way that they do...
Thinking of the tradtional classes offered in high school or university, is just a waste of time; a decent immersive environment, coupled with reading and speaking portions (i.e. a good vacation) will maximize fluidity in thinking in the minimum amount of time.

4-5 years is a very, very long time to take to learn anything!

Cheers.

ok now... you are right that conjugation should be easy. this is my first spanish try. tell me where i'm wrong: Yo quiero hablar espanol fluidamente y saber hablar con las muchachas [i wanted to say... i want to speak spanish fluently and know how to talk with girls]

What is conjugation? What is different about English's conjugation than Spanish's?

well conjugation reffers to derived forms of a verb... and romance languages often share same termination... english is part of other class of languages...

Originally Posted by expatplayer

What is conjugation? What is different about English's conjugation than Spanish's?

Spanish verbs have a different for each person, for past, present, and future, there are no things like "will/did", they are different words, so that's why I think it should take a few years to speak it perfectly, as even native speakers do not speak it correctly

well you can watch telenovelas or i don't know how they call those movie shows... with jose armando and... esmeralda lol

Originally Posted by expatplayer

What is conjugation? What is different about English's conjugation than Spanish's?

English is derived from High German, which also spawned Modern German and Dutch--not Latin, which spawned all the Romance languages and owes a lot to the regional influences and dialects. English verbs do not conjugate like Romance verbs, they follow a different set of rules, good example are here:
English conjugation tables - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hmmm, I think that conjugation is easier to understand if you see examples, and you can find that fairly easily on the net--here is more complex definition:
Grammatical conjugation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

French and Spanish (not too familiar with the others) tend to group their verbs by regularity and irregularity of the endings. All the verbs in each of the classes with have the same endings--you just plug in the verb stem. That makes it very different than Germanic verbs--which tend to decline (a different conversation all together.)

IMO, the Romance languages are far easier to learn that English would be to learn (if it weren't my native language.) Many Americans feel that French is difficult to learn due to its pronounciations, long vowels, and silent letters--completely forgetting that English is filled to the brim with homophones and silents; witness trying to teach ppl (Americans included!! The blog universe and this site abound with misspellings!) the differences in: to, too, two; there, their, they're; through and threw; though, thought, enough, blight, throughout, etc. It only seems to be less confusing if it is your native language...

Cheers.

The short answer is that, yes, English has far more words at its disposal than does Spanish, but the ratio isn't anywhere near that large. The ratio is probably closer to 2:1, although there is no exact way to give an answer. I have to say that alot of slang has made it into the Oxford English dictionary lately so i expect alot of the slang vocabulary used is a massive part of the English language.

I'm still reading up on those wikipedia links. There sure is a lot of reading. I'm learning a lot!

Originally Posted by MonAmb

The short answer is that, yes, English has far more words at its disposal than does Spanish, but the ratio isn't anywhere near that large.
The ratio is probably closer to 2:1, although there is no exact way to give an answer.
I have to say that alot of slang has made it into the Oxford English dictionary lately so i expect alot of the slang vocabulary used is a massive part of the English language.

English language - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
But, no--there is no way to come up with an exact number; and the number of words used varies with occupation and education. And, yes, slang--it is used by every language, prolifically by the young, and is apparently only routinely quantified by the large, cohesive dictionaries. The English language Webster's or the Oxford Unabridged, are designed to incorporate as many of these 'new' words as possible--even if it is just adding another definition to an already existing word.
Yes, English does have far more words than the Romance languages; a comfortable ratio of 5:1, definitely not 2:1.

Cheers.

Spaniards (and Panamanians) attempt to maintain order in their language by controlling what is an acceptable word in Spanish and what is not (through the Academia Panameña de la Lengua), whereas English speakers readily borrow words from other languages.
A few years ago, I believe the Real Academia de la Lengua removed a couple of letters from the Spanish alphabet. Ll, which was once considereed a single letter (elye) disappeared and was replaced by ll (two els). Likewise, ch, once a single letter, was replaced by a c and an h together. The effect of this ruling, unless you're a file clerk, is nil.

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Hello Mark,
Approximately over 81000 words. LangLearner I think it has a lot of helpful link, and I hope it helps you.

Originally Posted by killian

the number of words is almost the same as in English, but you need to know a lot more verbs in Spanish to communicate than in English, because of the verbs form

"Almost" is a rather generous estimate. Over the years I have discovered at least 10 English words for which there's no single-word Spanish translation. I can't recall all at this time, but two come to mind on short notice: Skyline and thread (as in forum thread).

If you are really interested in Spanish Verbs check out Christopher Kendris book "501 Spanish Verbs". There are seven simple tenses and seven compound tenses for each verb. In each tense there are six conjugations for each verb...I eat, you eat, he (she, it) eats, we eat, you eat (again I never use this one) and they eat . So 14 X 6 = 84 different conjugations for each verb. Rather over welming for someone who is used to 5.

I love to learn Spanish Language .........These posts helps me a lot to learn Spanish .

English about 600,000 & Spanish about 200,000...so, who cares!!! English is much easier than Spanish because you can communicate with less than a 1000 words; besides, verbs are easy to conjugate (conjugar). Spanish, is a pain when it comes to verbs; however, each vowel and letters have a definite phonetic sound....which English lacks. In my opinion, English being a Germanic language and Spanish a Romance language, when you compare them, 80 % of the vocabulary are identical or derive from Latin and Greek....I'm a Cuban-American, and my daughter is 3 years old, & she speaks perfect English (American) & Spanish (Cuban-Colombian accent).....another rule, if you want to learn Spanish, just do your talking & forget about any mistakes or verbs conjugation--- Who cares about the "Pasado Pluscuamperfecto;" Not even the native Spanish speaker uses it anymore...People appreciate knowing that you try hard!!! r

Help! How many words in the Spanish language break the gender rules for singular nouns?

One wouldn't want words to get in the way of communication anymore than one would want the truth get in the way of a good story...