How Many Words Do You Know?

cornflake · Aug 18, 2016

Do it for science!

Ghent University has a little game online to help estimate the size of your vocabulary - for a study into... the size of people's English vocabularies. It's fun, couple minutes, vaguely like an IAT but not as fast.

Test here. There's demographic info they ask for in the beginning that you do not have to provide - if you do, your results will be included, if not, you can just play for fun. You can also repeat the test, as they use different, randomly-generated words each time.

I know 90% of the words. I dispute this! Heh.

mrsmig · Aug 18, 2016

I got 83%. I play too much Scrabble, I guess - I look at a combination of letters and think, "oh, that could be a word."

Marissa D · Aug 18, 2016

That was fun! I got 91%

shortstorymachinist · Aug 18, 2016

I got 77% and avoided all of the non-words. There were also more than a few moments where I stared at a word I had never heard before but would have happily bet the farm on its legitimacy, and then pressed no anyway.

E.F.B. · Aug 18, 2016

Mine said 70%. I accidentally said "no" to one word that I did know (stupid twitchy finger). I on purpose said "yes" to two non-words because I thought they seemed familiar, but apparently they weren't. Then there were some real words that confused me, like "belowground" because they looked like two real words smooshed together and I thought maybe the testers were being tricky, so I marked them as "no". In my defense, my computer says "belowground" should be two separate words too.

morngnstar · Aug 18, 2016

I got 93%. I'm proud of falling for zero of the decoys. I also said no to a few words that I recognized as real words, but didn't know the meaning.

Another test I took said I knew about 30,000 words. It's hard to believe 30,000 is 90% of the words in English. But I was so close to the tail on that test that I doubt it's accurate. The same score could predict 30,000 or 100,000 words.

ETA: Here is that other test. http://www.arealme.com/vocabulary-size-test/en/

shortstorymachinist · Aug 18, 2016

I took it again, this time clicking yes for anything that remotely sounded like a word. I got 90%, but picked enough of the non-words to drop me down to 63% after penalties. This is way more fun than I expected.

CathleenT · Aug 18, 2016

I got eighty percent of the legit vocab words with none of the nonwords. Not quite sharing the same rarified air as cornflake and morningstar, but that's okay.

LJD · Aug 18, 2016

I got 83%

Raindrop · Aug 18, 2016

84%. And I feel really silly for not recognising "passionflower". Duh.

CassandraW · Aug 18, 2016

fun! 91%. I didn't guess any of the nonwords, but played safe with a couple that I was pretty sure were words, but wasn't sure of their meaning.

JenniferLee · Aug 18, 2016

nossmf · Aug 18, 2016

87% (90% - a single nonword)

Raindrop · Aug 18, 2016

Did it again and scored 89%.

How many words do people know?
[FONT=&quot]This is one of the questions we’d like to answer with our test. However, on the basis of our experiences with a similar test in Dutch and previous rating studies in English we estimate that a proficient native speaker will know some 40,000 words of the list (i.e., 67%). Older people know more words than younger people. The situation is different for second language speakers. Here, our estimates range from 6,000 words (10%) for a medium proficiency speaker to 20,000 words (33%) for a high-proficiency speaker.[/FONT]

I'm ESL, so I'm curious by what they mean by high-proficiency. Do they mean people who could fake it and almost sound like natives? Because in that case, I *think* it should be higher than that -- although that might depend on the original language. I noticed quite a few of the most outlandish words had Latin roots, which might make it easier for evil French folk like me.

Siri Kirpal · Aug 18, 2016

Sat Nam! (literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

Couldn't get the test to start. Got 90% or higher when I took the GRE twenty years ago. But that's not the same thing.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal

Mclesh · Aug 18, 2016

89% with zero non-words. I'm not sure how to feel about that. I was hoping for at least an A.

CassandraW · Aug 18, 2016

It's an odd test. The words appear to be selected at random. There were some extremely obscure words one would pretty much never find occasion to use other than in a scrabble game, and then really common words one would imagine even a not-very-fluent English speaker would know ("thin" was on my list).

morngnstar · Aug 18, 2016

Since everyone is taking it again, I tried again, being more reckless. I expected I'd get a higher correct percent but maybe some wrong guesses, but actually I had zero wrong guesses again, and only 90% of real words.

SomethingOrOther · Aug 18, 2016

107%

I'm very smartocious.

CassandraW · Aug 18, 2016

morngnstar said:
Since everyone is taking it again, I tried again, being more reckless. I expected I'd get a higher correct percent but maybe some wrong guesses, but actually I had zero wrong guesses again, and only 90% of real words.

I'm afraid to guess -- they warn you'll be penalized if you get one wrong and I do hate to be penalized. But yes, I took it a second and third time, just for fun -- 89% and 93%. Interesting that the scores were so similar, since all of the words were different each time.

cornflake · Aug 18, 2016

I took it again and got the same score - both times with zero nonwords.

I too find the selections interesting, and wonder about the percentage responses for stuff - I saw loll and a couple of medical words go by, which, at a quick glance, might look like a random collection of letters, as well as as some really simple and a couple much more complex.

Siri Kirpal · Aug 18, 2016

Sat Nam! (literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

Tried again. Was able to do it this time. 89%, no non-words. There were a couple I thought might have tried if there weren't a penalty.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal

Cindyt · Aug 18, 2016

83% I disagree. It just didn't have some of the words I know.

Solanova · Aug 18, 2016

I only got 71% 0%non-words, but I may have gotten distracted by the ability to click on links and learning the meanings of all the words that I didn't know... Down the rabbit hole I go! You can retake the test too, woo! Might do it in a couple of days, see if i retain anything haha. This is so awesome, thanks for sharing!~

Koschei · Aug 19, 2016

87% and no non-words. Though, there were quite a few where I thought "That's got to be one of the non-words" and it turned out to be real.

How Many Words Do You Know?

practical experience, FTW

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The score is still Q to 12!

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The score is still Q to 12!

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It's too hot

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Swan in Process

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