English undoubtedly is the world's richest language in the sense of having the largest vocabulary. Citation needed. I have, however, found this: Is it true t

English undoubtedly is the world's richest language in the sense of having the largest vocabulary. Citation needed. I have, however, found this: Is it true that English has the most words of any language? This question is practically impossible to answer, for the reasons explained in the answer to How many words are there in the English language? However, it seems quite probable that English has more words than most comparable world languages. http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/page/94 http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/page/94 Also interesting, from Wikipedia: The most comprehensive pure linguistic Chinese-language dictionary, the 12-volumed Hanyu Da Cidian, records more than 23,000 head Chinese characters, and gives over 370,000 definitions. A Chinese character is a bit like a prefix/suffix in English. Most words are made of two characters. I would guess that "370,000 definitions" means there are 370,000 different words. But the phrasing is a bit strange.